The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The life and teaching of Karl Marx
Author: M. Beer
Release Date: September 2, 2011 [EBook #37290]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX ***
Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has |
| been preserved. |
| |
| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For |
| a complete list, please see the end of this document. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
_SOCIAL STUDIES SERIES_
(_VOLUME TWO_).
THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF
KARL MARX
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1921
[_All rights reserved._]
THE
LIFE AND TEACHING
OF
KARL MARX
BY
M. BEER
_Author of "A History of British Socialism"_
TRANSLATED BY T.C. PARTINGTON
AND H.J. STENNING, AND REVISED
BY THE AUTHOR
NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED,
LONDON: 8/9, JOHNSON'S COURT, E.C. 4
MANCHESTER: 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION:
I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX ix.
II. THE WORK OF HEGEL xiii.
I. PARENTS AND FRIENDS:
I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP 1
II. STUDENT 3
III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE 11
II. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM:
I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS 15
II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS 19
III. CONTROVERSY WITH BAUER AND RUGE 21
IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON 26
III. YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES:
I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES 39
II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO 41
III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 48
IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE IN LONDON 51
V. THE INTERNATIONAL 54
VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE 59
VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE 60
IV. THE MARXIAN SYSTEM:
I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 65
II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS 78
III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE
PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP 84
IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES 93
V. CONCLUSION 125
INTRODUCTION.
I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX.
Karl Marx belongs to the ranks of those philosophical and sociological
thinkers who throw potent thought-ferment into the world, and set in
motion the masses of mankind. They awaken slumbering doubts and
contradictions. They proclaim new modes of thought, new social forms.
Their systems may sooner or later become obsolete, and the ruthless
march of time may finally overthrow their intellectual edifice;
meanwhile, however, they stimulate into activity the minds of
countless men, inflame countless human hearts, imprinting on them
characteristics which are transmitted to coming generations. This is
the grandest and finest work to which any human being can be called.
Because these thinkers have lived and worked, their contemporaries and
successors think more clearly, feel more intensely, and are richer in
knowledge and self-consciousness.
The history of philosophy and of social science is comprised in such
systems and generalisations. They are the index to the annals of
mankind. None of these systems is complete, none comprehends all human
motives and capacities, none exhausts all the forces and currents of
human society. They all express only fragmentary truths, which,
however, become effective and achieve success because they are shining
lights amidst the intellectual confusion of the generation which gives
them birth, bringing it to a consciousness of the questions of the
time, rendering its further development less difficult, and enabling
its strongest spirits to stand erect, with fixity of purpose, in
critical periods.
Hegel expresses himself in a similar sense where he remarks: "When the
refutation of a philosophy is spoken of, this is usually meant in an
abstract negative (completely destructive) sense, so that the confuted
philosophy has no longer any validity whatever, and is set aside and
done with. If this be so, the study of the history of philosophy must
be regarded as a thoroughly depressing business, seeing that this
study teaches that every system of philosophy which has arisen in the
course of time has found its refutation. But if it is as good as
granted that every philosophy has been refuted, yet at the same time
it must be also asserted that no philosophy has been refuted, nor ever
can be refuted ... for every philosophical system is to be considered
as the presentation of a particular moment or a particular stage in
the evolutionary process of the idea. The history of philosophy ... is
not, in its totality, a gallery of the aberrations of the human
intellect, but is rather to be compared to a pantheon of deities."
--("Hegel, Encyclopædia," vol. 1, section 86, note 2.)
What Hegel says here about philosophy is true also of systems of
social science, and styles and forms in art. The displacement of one
system by another reflects the historical sequence of the various
stages of social evolution. The characteristic which is common to all
these systems is their vitality.
In spite of their defects and difficulties there surges through them a
living spirit from the influence of which contemporaries cannot
escape. Opponents may put themselves to endless trouble to contradict
such systems, and show up their shortcomings and inconsistencies, and
yet, with all their pains, they do not succeed in attaining their
object; their logical sapping and mining, their passionate attacks
break against the vital spirit which the creative genius has breathed
into his work. The deep impression made on us by this vitality is one
of the main factors in the formation of our judgments upon scientific
and artistic achievements. Mere formal perfection and beauty through
which the life of the times does not throb can never create this
impression.
Walter Scott, who was often reproached with defects and
inconsistencies in the construction of his novels, once made answer
with the following anecdote: A French sculptor, who had taken up his
abode in Rome, was fond of taking to the Capitol his artistically
inclined countrymen who were travelling in Italy, to show them the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on which occasions he was at
pains to demonstrate that the horse was defectively modelled, and did
not meet the requirements of anatomy. After one of these criticisms a
visitor urged him to prove his case in a concrete form by constructing
a horse on correct artistic principles. The critic set to work, and
when, after the lapse of a year, his friends were again visiting Rome,
exhibited to them his horse. It was anatomically perfect. Proudly he
had it brought to the Capitol, in order to compare both productions
and so celebrate his triumph. Quite absorbed in his critical
comparison, the French sculptor after a while gave way to a burst of
genuine artistic feeling, which caused him pathetically to exclaim,
"_Et pourtant cette bête-là est vivante, et la mienne est morte!_"
(And yet that animal is alive, while mine is dead.)
Quite a number of Marxian critics find themselves in the same position
as the hypercritical French sculptor. Their formal and logically
complete economic doctrines and systems of historical philosophy,
provided with pedantically correct details and definitions, remain
dead and ineffective. They do not put us into contact with the
relations of the time, whereas Marx has bequeathed both to the
educated and the uneducated, to his readers and to non-readers, a
multitude of ideas and expressions relating to social science, which
have become current throughout the whole world.
In Petrograd and in Tokio, in Berlin and in London, in Paris and in
Pittsburg, people speak of capital and of the capitalist system, of
means of production and of the class struggle; of Reform and
Revolution; of the Proletariat and of Socialism. The extent of Marx's
influence is shown by the economic explanation of the world-war, which
is even accepted by the most decided opponents of the materialist
conception of history. A generation after Marx's death, the
sovereignty of Capital shrinks visibly, works' committees and shops'
stewards interfere with the productive processes, Socialists and
Labour men fill the Parliaments, working men and their representatives
rise to or take by storm the highest position of political power in
States and Empires. Many of their triumphs would scarcely have
received Marx's approval. His theory, white-hot with indomitable
passion, demanded that the new tables of the Law should be given to
men amidst thunder and lightning. But still the essential thing is
that the proletariat is loosening its bonds, even if it does not
burst them noisily asunder. We find ourselves in the first stages of
the evolution of Socialist society. Through whatever forms this
evolutionary process may pass in its logical development, this much is
certain, that only by active thought on the part of Socialists and by
the loyal co-operation of the workers can it be brought to its
perfection.
We are already using Hegelian expressions, and must therefore pause
here to note briefly Hegel's contribution to the subject. Without a
knowledge of this, no one can be in a position to appreciate the
important factors in the life and influence of Marx, or even to
understand his first intellectual achievements during his student
years.
II. THE WORK OF HEGEL.
Until towards the end of the eighteenth century, learned and
unlearned, philosophers and philistines, had some such general notions
as the following. The world has either been created, or it has existed
from eternity. It is either governed by a personal, supernatural god
or universal spirit, or it is kept going by nature, like some delicate
machine. It exists in accordance with eternal laws, and is perfect,
ordained to fulfil some design, and constant. The things and beings
which are found in it are divided into kinds, species and classes. All
is fixed, constant and eternal. Things and beings are contiguous in
space, and succeed one another in time, as they have done ever since
time was. It is the same with the incidents and events of the world
and of mankind. Such common proverbs as "There is nothing new under
the sun" and "History repeats itself" are but the popular expression
of this view.
Correlative to this philosophy was Logic, or the science of the laws
of thinking (Greek logos--reason, word). It taught how men should use
their reason, how they should express themselves reasonably, how
concepts arise (in what manner, for example, the human understanding
arrived at the concepts stone, tree, animal, man, virtue, vice, etc.);
further, how such concepts are combined into judgments (propositions),
and finally, how conclusions are drawn from these judgments. This
logic exhibited the intellectual processes of the human mind. It was
founded by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 to 322 B.C.), and
remained essentially unaltered until the beginning of the nineteenth
century, in the same way as our whole conception of the universe
remained unchanged. This science of human intellectual processes was
based on three original laws of thought, which best characterise it.
Just as an examining magistrate looks a prisoner in the face, and
identifies him, so that uncertainty and contradiction may be avoided,
so this logic began by establishing the identity of the conceptions
with which it was to operate. Consequently, it established as the
first law of thought the Principle of Identity, which runs as follows:
A = A, i.e., each thing, each being, is like itself; it possesses an
individuality of its own, peculiar to itself. To put it more clearly,
this principle affirms that the earth is the earth, a state is a
state, Capital is Capital, Socialism is Socialism.
From this proceeds the second law of thought, the Principle of
Contradiction. A cannot be A and not--A. Or following our example
given above, the earth cannot be the earth and a ball of fire; a
State cannot be a State and an Anarchy; Capital cannot be Capital and
Poverty; Socialism cannot be Socialism and Individualism. Therefore
there must be no contradictions, for a thing which contradicts itself
is nonsense; where, however, this occurs either in actuality or in
thought, it is only an accidental exception to the rule, as it were,
or a passing and irregular phenomenon.
From this law of thought follows directly the third, viz., the
Principle of the Excluded Middle. A thing is either A or non-A; there
is no middle term. Or, according to our example, the earth is either a
solid body, or, if it is not solid, it is no earth; there is no middle
term. The State is either monarchical, or, if it is not monarchical,
it is no State. Capitalism is either oppressive, or altogether not
Capitalism. Socialism is either revolutionary, or not Socialism at
all; there is no middle term. (Socialism is either reformist, or not
Socialism at all; there is no middle term.)
With these three intellectual laws of identity, of contradiction, and
of the excluded middle, formal logic begins.
It is at once apparent that this logic operates with rigid, constant,
unchanging, dogmatic conceptions, something like geometry, which deals
with definitely bounded spatial forms. Such was the rationale of the
old world-philosophy.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century a new conception of the
world had begun to make its way. The world, as we see it, or get to
know it from books, was neither created, nor has it existed from time
immemorial, but has developed in the course of uncounted thousands of
years, and is still in process of development. It has traversed a
whole series of changes, transformations, and catastrophes. The earth
was a gaseous mass, then a ball of fire; the species and classes of
things and beings which exist on the earth have partly arisen by
gradual transition from one sort into another, and partly made their
appearance as a result of sudden changes. And in human history it is
the same as in nature; the form and significance of the family, of the
State, of production, of religion, of law, etc., are subjected to a
process of development. All things are in flux, in a state of
becoming, of arising and disappearing. There is nothing rigid,
constant, unchanging in the Cosmos.
In view of the new conception, the old formal logic could no longer
satisfy the intellect; it could not adequately deal with things in a
state of evolution. In ever-increasing measure it became impossible
for the thinker to work with hard and fast conceptions. From the
beginning of the nineteenth century a new logic was sought, and it was
G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) who made a comprehensive and thoroughly
painstaking endeavour to formulate a new logic in accordance with the
universal process of evolution. This task appeared to him to be the
more urgent, as his whole philosophy aimed at bringing thought and
being, reason and the universe, into the closest connection and
agreement, dealing with them as inseparable from each other, regarding
them as identical, and representing the universe as the gradual
embodiment of Reason. "What is reasonable is real; what is real is
reasonable." The task of philosophy is to comprehend what is. Every
individual is the child of his time. Even philosophy is its time
grasped in thought. No individual can overleap his time. (Pref. to
Phil, of Law.) It is evident that, in his way, Hegel was no abstract
thinker, divorced from actuality, and speculating at large. Rather he
set himself to give material content to the abstract and purely ideal,
to make it concrete, in fact. The idea without reality, or reality
without the idea, seemed to him unthinkable. Accordingly his logic
could not deal merely with the laws of thought, but must at the same
time take account of the laws of cosmic evolution. Merely to play with
the forms of thought, and to fence with ideas, as the old logicians,
especially in the Middle Ages, were wont to do, seemed to him a
useless, abstract, unreal operation. He, therefore, created a science
of thinking, which formulated not only the laws of thought, but also
the laws of evolution, albeit, unfortunately, in a language which
offered immense difficulties to his readers.
The essence of his logic is the dialectic.
By dialectic the old Greeks understood the art of discourse and
rejoinder, the refutation of an opponent by the destruction of his
assertions and proofs, the bringing into relief of the contradictions
and antitheses. When examined closely, this art of discussion, in
spite of its contradictory and apparently negative (destructive)
intellectual work, is seen to be very useful, because, out of the
clash of opposing opinions, it brings forth the truth and stimulates
to deeper thought. Hegel seized hold of this expression, and named his
logical method after it. This is the dialectical method, or the manner
of conceiving the things and beings of the universe as in the process
of becoming, through the struggle of contradictory elements and their
resolution. With its aid, he brings to judgment the three original
laws of thought which have already been alluded to. The principle of
identity is an abstract, incomplete truth, for it separates a thing
from the variety of other things, and its relations to them. Everybody
will see this to be true. Let us take the proposition: the earth is
the earth. Whoever hears the first three words of this proposition
naturally expects that what is predicated of the earth should tell him
something which distinguishes the earth from other things. Instead of
this, he is offered an empty, hard and fast identity, the dead husk of
an idea. If the principle of identity is at best only an incomplete
truth, the principles of contradiction and of the excluded middle are
complete untruths. Far from making a thought nonsense, contradiction
is the very thing which unfolds and develops the thought, and hence,
too, the object which it expresses. It is precisely opposition, or
antithesis, which sets things in motion, which is the mainspring of
evolution, which calls forth and develops the latent forces and powers
of being. Had the earth as a fiery, gaseous mass remained in that
state, without the contradiction, that is, the cooling and
condensation, taking place, then no life would have appeared on it.
Had the State remained autocratic, and the contradictory principle,
middle-class freedom, been absent, then the life of the State would
have become rigid, and the bloom of culture rendered impossible. Had
Capitalism remained without its proletarian contradiction, then it
would have reverted to an industrial feudalism. It is the
contradiction, or the antithesis, which brings into being the whole
kingdom of the potentialities and gifts of nature and of humanity.
Only when the contradictory begins to reveal itself does evolution to
a higher plane of thought and existence begin. It is obvious that we
are not concerned here with logical contradictions, which usually
arise from unclear thinking or from confusion in the presentation of
facts; Hegel, and after him Marx, dealt rather with real
contradictions, with antitheses and conflicts, as they arise of
themselves in the process of evolution of things and conditions.
The thing or the being, against which the contradiction operates, was
called by Hegel the Positive, and the contradiction, the antagonistic
element, or the antithesis, he called the Negation. As may be seen
from our example, this negation is not mere annihilation, not a
resolution into nothing, but a clearing away and a building up at the
same time; a disappearance and a coming into existence; a movement to
a higher stage. Hegel says in this connection: "It has been hitherto
one of the rooted prejudices of logic and a commonly accepted belief
that the contradiction is not so essential or so inherent a
characteristic (in thought and existence) as the identity. Yet in
comparison with it the identity is, in truth, but the characteristic
of what is simply and directly perceived, of lifeless existence. The
contradiction, however, is the source of all movement and life; only
in so far as it contains a contradiction can anything have movement,
power, and effect."
The part played by the contradiction, the antithesis, or the negation
very easily escapes a superficial observer. He sees, indeed, that the
world is filled with a variety of things, and that where anything is
there is also its opposite; e.g., existence--non-existence,
cold--heat, light--darkness, mildness--harshness, pleasure--pain,
joy--sorrow, riches--poverty, Capital--Labour, life--death,
virtue--vice, Idealism--Materialism, Romanticism--Classicism, etc.,
but superficial thought does not realise that it is faced with a world
of contradictions and antitheses; it only knows that the world is full
of varied and manifold things. "Only active reason," says Hegel,
"reduced the mere multiplicity and diversity of phenomena to
antithesis. And only when pushed to this point do the manifold
phenomena become active and mutually stimulating, producing the state
of negation, which is the very heart-beat of progress and life." Only
through their differentiation and unfolding as opposing forces and
factors is further progress beyond the antithesis to a higher positive
stage made possible. "Where, however," continues Hegel, "the power to
develop the contradiction and bring it to a head is lacking, the thing
or the being is shattered on the contradiction."--(Hegel, "Science of
Logic," Pt. 1, Sec. 2, pp. 66, 69, 70.)
This thought of Hegel's is of extraordinary importance for the
understanding of Marxism. It is the soul of the Marxian doctrine of
the class-struggle, nay, of the whole Marxian system. One may say that
Marx is always on the look-out for contradictions within the social
development, for wherever the contradiction (antithesis--class
struggle) shows itself, there begins, according to Marx-Hegel, the
progress to a higher plane.[1]
We have now become familiar with two expressions of the dialectical
method, the positive and the negation. We have seen the first two
stages of the process of growth in thought and in reality. The process
is not yet complete. It still requires a third stage. This third step
Hegel called the Negation of the Negation. With the continued
operation of the negation, a new thing or being comes into existence.
To revert to our examples: the complete cooling and condensation of
the earth's crust: the rise of the middle-class State: the victory of
the Proletariat: these things represent the suspension or the setting
aside of the Negation; the contradiction is thus resolved, and a new
stage in the process of evolution is reached. The expressions Positive
(or affirmation), Negation, and Negation of the Negation, are also
known as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
In order to understand this more distinctly, and to visualise it, let
us consider an egg. It is something positive, but it contains a germ,
which, awakening to life, gradually consumes (i.e., negatives) the
contents of the egg. This negation is, however, no mere destruction
and annihilation; on the contrary, it results in the germ developing
into a living thing. The negation being complete, the chick breaks
through the egg shell. This represents the negation of the negation,
whereby there has arisen something organically higher than an egg.
This mode of procedure in human thinking and in the operations of
nature and history Hegel called the dialectical method, or the
dialectical process. It is evident that the dialectic is at the same
time a method of investigation and a philosophy. Hegel outlines his
dialectic in the following words:
"The only thing which is required for scientific progress, an
elementary principle for the understanding of which one should really
strive, is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative
is just as much a positive, or that the contradictory does not
resolve into nothing, into an abstract nothingness, but actually only
into the negation of a special content.... In so far as the resultant,
the negation, is a definite negation, it has a content. It is a new
conception, but a higher and richer conception than the preceding one;
for it has been enriched by the negation or antithesis of this; it
therefore contains it and more than contains it, being indeed the
synthetic unity of itself and its contrary. In this way the system of
concepts has to be formed--and is to be perfected by a continual and
purely intellectual process which is independent of outside
influences."--(Hegel, "Science of Logic" (German), Bk. I.,
Introduction.)
The dialectical process completes itself not only by gradual
transitions, but also by leaps. Hegel remarks:
"It has been said that there are no sudden leaps in nature, and it is
a common notion that things have their origin through gradual increase
or decrease. But there is also such a thing as sudden transformation
from quantity into quality. For example, water does not become
gradually hard on cooling, becoming first pulpy and ultimately
attaining the rigidity of ice, but turns hard at once. If the
temperature be lowered to a certain degree, the water is suddenly
changed into ice, i.e., the quantity--the number of degrees of
temperature--is transformed into quality--a change in the nature of
the thing."--("Logic" (German), Pt. 1, Sec. 1, p. 464, Ed. 1841.)
Marx handled this method with unsurpassed mastery; with its aid he
formulated the laws of the evolution of Socialism. In his earliest
works, "The Holy Family" (1844) and the "Poverty of Philosophy"
(1847), written when he was formulating his materialist conception of
history, as also in his "Capital," it is with the dialectic of Hegel
that he investigates these laws.
"Proletariat and Riches (later Marx would have said Capital) are
antitheses. As such they constitute a whole; both are manifestations
of the world of private property. The question to be considered is the
specific position which both occupy in the antithesis. To describe
them as two sides of a whole is not a sufficient explanation. Private
property as private property, as riches, is compelled to preserve its
own existence, and along with it that of its antithesis, the
Proletariat. Private property satisfied in itself is the positive side
of the antithesis. The Proletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as
Proletariat, to abolish itself, and along with it private property,
its conditioned antithesis, which makes it the Proletariat. It is a
negative side of the antithesis, the internal source of unrest, the
disintegrated and disintegrating Proletariat.... Within the
antithesis, therefore, the owner of private property is the
conservative, and the proletarian is the destructive party. From the
former proceeds the action of maintaining the antithesis, from the
latter the action of destroying it. From the point of view of its
national, economic movement, private property is, of course,
continually being driven towards its own dissolution, but only by an
unconscious development which is independent of it, and which exists
against its will, and is limited by the nature of things; only, that
is, by creating the Proletariat as proletariat, poverty conscious of
its own physical and spiritual poverty, and demoralised humanity
conscious of its own demoralisation and consequently striving against
it.
"The Proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property by the
creation of the Proletariat suspends over itself, just as it fulfils
the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien
riches and its own condemnation. If the Proletariat triumphs, it does
not thereby become the absolute side of society, for it triumphs only
by abolishing itself and its opposite. In this way both the
Proletariat and its conditioned opposite, private property, are done
away with."[2]
The dialectical method is again described in a few sentences on pages
420-421 of the third volume of "Capital" (German), where we read: "In
so far as the labour process operates merely between man and nature,
its simple elements are common to every form of its social
development. But any given historical form of this process further
develops its material foundations and its social forms. When it has
attained a certain degree of maturity the given historical form is
cast off and makes room for a higher one. That the moment of such a
crisis has arrived is shown as soon as there is a deepening and
widening of the contradiction and antithesis between the conditions of
distribution, and consequently also the existing historical form of
the conditions of production corresponding to them, on the one hand,
and the forces of production, productive capacity, and the state of
evolution of its agents, on the other. There then arises a conflict
between the material development of production and its corresponding
social form."
But the Hegelian dialectic appears most strikingly in the famous
twenty-fourth chapter (sec. 7) of the first volume of "Capital"
(German), where the evolution of capitalism from small middle-class
ownership through all phases up to the Socialist revolution is
comprehensively outlined in bold strokes: "The capitalist method of
appropriation, which springs from the capitalist method of production,
and therefore capitalist private property, is the first negation of
individual private property based on one's own labour. But capitalist
production begets with the inevitableness of a natural process its own
negation. It is the negation of the negation." Here we have the three
stages: the thesis--private property; the antithesis--capitalism; the
synthesis--common ownership.
Of critical social writers outside Germany it was Proudhon, in
particular, who, in his works "What is Property?" and "Economic
Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Poverty" (1840, 1846), attempted
to use the Hegelian dialectic. The fact that he gave his chief book
the title "Economic Contradictions" shows that Proudhon was largely
preoccupied with Hegel. Nevertheless, he did not get below the
surface; he used the Hegelian formulæ quite mechanically, and lacked
the conception of an immanent process of development (the
forward-impelling force within the social organism).
If we look at the dialectical method as here presented, Hegel might be
taken for a materialist thinker. Such a notion would be erroneous. For
Hegel is an idealist: the origin and essence of the process of growth
is to be sought, according to him, not in material forces, but in the
logical idea, reason, the universal spirit, the absolute, or--in its
religious expression--God. Before He created the world He is to be
regarded as an Idea, containing within itself all forms of being,
which it develops dialectically. The idea creates for itself a
material embodiment; it first expresses itself in the objects of
inorganic nature; then in plants, organisms wherein life awakens; then
in animals, in which the Idea attains to the twilight of reason;
finally, in men, where reason rises into mind and achieves
self-consciousness and freedom. As self-conscious mind it expresses
itself in the history of peoples, in religion, art and philosophy, in
human institutions, in the family and in law, until it realises itself
in the State as its latest and highest object.
According to Hegel, then, the universal Idea develops into Godhead in
proportion as the material world rises from the inorganic to the
organic, and, finally, to man. In the mental part of man, the Idea
arrives at self-consciousness and freedom and becomes God. In his
cosmology, Hegel is a direct descendant of the German mystics,
Sebastion Franck and Jacob Boehme. He was in a much higher degree
German than any of the German philosophers since Leibnitz.
The strangest thing, however, is that Germanism, Protestantism, and
the Prussian State appeared to Hegel as the highest expression of the
universal mind. Particularly the Prussian State as it existed before
March, 1848, with its repudiation of all middle-class reforms and
liberalism (of any kind), and its basis of strong governmental force.
There is little purpose in trying to acquire a logical conception of
Hegelian cosmology. It is not only idealist, but, as we said,
mystical; it is as inconceivable to human reason as the biblical; it
is irrational, and lies beyond the sphere of reason. Making the
universe arise out of pure reason, out of the logical idea, developing
through the dialectical process with a consciousness of freedom, it
yet concludes in unreason and an obstinate determinism. In Liberalism
Hegel saw only a simple negation, a purely destructive factor, which
disintegrates the State and resolves it into individuals, thus
depriving it of all cohesion and organising strength. He blamed
Parliamentarism for demanding "that everything should take place
through their (the individuals) expressed power and consent. The will
of the many overturns the Ministry, and what was the Opposition now
takes control, but, so far as it is the Government, the latter finds
the many against it. Thus agitation and unrest continue. This
collision, this knot, this problem, is what confronts history, a
problem which it must resolve at some future time." One would have
thought that it was precisely Parliamentarism, with its unrest and
agitation, its antitheses and antagonisms, which would have had a
special attraction for Hegel, but nevertheless he turned aside from
it. How is this to be explained?
Hegel's relation to the Prussian State is to be accounted for by his
strong patriotic sentiments. His disposition inclined him strongly to
nationalism in politics. In his early manhood he witnessed the
complete dissolution of the German Empire, and deeply bewailed the
wretchedness of German conditions. He wrote: "Germany is no longer a
State; even the wars which Germany waged have not ended in a
particularly honourable manner for her. Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine
have been torn away. The Peace of Westphalia has often been alluded to
as Germany's Palladium, although by it the complete dismemberment of
Germany has only been established more thoroughly than before. The
Germans have been grateful to Richelieu, who destroyed their power."
On the other hand, the achievements of Prussia in the Seven Years'
War, and in the War of Liberation against the French, awoke in him the
hope that it was this State which could save Germany. To this thought
he gave eloquent and enthusiastic expression in his address at the
opening of his Berlin lectures in October, 1818, and also in his
lecture on Frederick the Great. Hegel therefore rejected everything
which seemed to him to spell a weakening of the Prussia State power.
The dialectician was overcome by national feelings.
However, Hegel's place in the history of thought rests, not on his
explanations of the creation of the world, nor on his German
nationalist politics, but upon the dialectical method. In exploring,
by means of this method, the wide expanse of human knowledge, he
scattered an astonishing abundance of materialistic and strictly
scientific observations and suggestions, and inspired his pupils and
readers with a living conception of history, of the development of
mankind to self-consciousness and freedom, thus rendering them capable
of pushing their studies further, and emancipating themselves from all
mysticism. As an example of the materialist tendency of his
philosophy, the following references will serve. His "Philosophy of
History" contains a whole chapter upon the geographical foundations of
universal history. In this chapter he expresses himself--quite
contrary to his deification of the State--as follows: "A real State
and a real central government only arise when the distinction of
classes is already given, when Riches and Poverty have become very
great, and such conditions have arisen that a great multitude can no
longer satisfy their needs in the way to which they have been
accustomed." Or take his explanation of the founding of colonies by
the Greeks.
"This projecting of colonies, particularly in the period after the
Trojan War until Cyrus, is here a peculiar phenomenon, which may thus
be explained: in the individual towns the people had the governing
power in their hands, in that they decided the affairs of State in the
last resort. In consequence of the long peace, population and
development greatly increased, and quickly brought about the
accumulation of great riches, which is always accompanied by the
phenomenon of great distress and poverty. Industry, in our sense, did
not exist at that time, and the land was speedily monopolised.
Nevertheless, a section of the poorer classes would not allow
themselves to be depressed to the poverty line, for each man felt
himself to be a free citizen. The sole resource, therefore, was
colonisation."
Or even the following passage, which conceives the philosophical
system merely as the result and reflection of the accomplished facts
of existence, and therefore rejects all painting of Utopias: "Besides,
philosophy comes always too late to say a word as to how the world
ought to be. As an idea of the universe, it only arises in the period
after reality has completed its formative process and attained its
final shape. What this conception teaches is necessarily demonstrated
by history, namely, that the ideal appears over against the real only
after the consummation of reality, that the ideal reconstructs the
same world, comprehended in the substance of reality, in the form of
an intellectual realm. A form of life has become old when philosophy
paints its grey on grey, and with grey on grey it cannot be
rejuvenated but only recognised. The owl of Minerva begins its flight
only with the falling twilight."--Preface to the "Philosophy of Law."
No materialist could have said this better: the owl--the symbol of
wisdom--only begins her flight in the evening, after the busy
activities of the world are over. Thus we have first the universe, and
then thought; first existence, and then consciousness.
Hegel himself was therefore an example of his own teaching that
contradictory elements are to be found side by side. His mind
contained both idealism and realism, but he did not bring them by a
process of reasoning to the point of acute contradiction in order to
reach a higher plane of thought. And as he regarded it as the task of
philosophy to recognise the principle of things, and to follow it out
systematically and logically throughout the whole vast domain of
reality, and as further, owing to his mystical bent, he asserted the
idea to be the ultimate reality, he remained a consistent Idealist.
The Conservatism of Hegel, who was the philosophical representative of
the Prussian State, was, however, sadly incompatible with the
awakening consciousness of the German middle class, which, in spite of
its economic weakness, aspired to a freer State constitution, and
greater liberty of action. These aspirations were already somewhat
more strongly developed in the larger towns and industrial centres of
Prussia and the other German States. The Young Hegelians[3] championed
this middle-class awakening in the philosophical sphere, just as
"Young Germany" (Heine, Boerne, etc.) did in the province of
literature.
Just at the time when Marx was still at the university the Young
Hegelians took up the fight against the conservative section of
Hegel's disciples and the Christian Romanticism of Prussia. The
antagonism between the old and the new school made itself felt both in
religious philosophy and political literature, but both tendencies
were seldom combined in the same persons. David Strauss subjected the
Gospels to a candid criticism; Feuerbach investigated the nature of
Christianity and of religion generally, and in this department
inverted Hegel's Idealism to Materialism; Bruno Bauer trained his
heavy historical and philosophical artillery on the traditional dogmas
concerning the rise of Christianity. Politically, however, they
remained at the stage of the freedom of the individual: that is, they
were merely moderate Liberals. Nevertheless, there were also less
prominent Young Hegelians who were at that time in the Liberal left
wing as regards their political opinions, such as Arnold Ruge.
None of the Young Hegelians had, however, used the dialectical method
to develop still further the teaching of the Master. Karl Marx, the
youngest of the Hegelians, first brought it to a higher stage in
social science. He was no longer known to Hegel, who might otherwise
have died with a more contented or perhaps even still more perturbed
mind. Heinrich Heine, who belonged to the Hegelians in the thirties
and forties, relates the following anecdote, which if not true yet
excellently illustrates the extraordinary difficulties of the Master's
doctrines:--
As Hegel lay dying, his disciples, who had gathered round him, seeing
the furrows deepen on the Master's care-worn countenance, inquired the
cause of his grief, and tried to comfort him by reminding him of the
large number of admiring disciples and followers he would leave
behind. Breathing with difficulty, he replied: "None of my disciples
has understood me; only Michelet has understood me, and," he added
with a sigh, "even he has misunderstood me."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In one of the later chapters the reader will find the series of
contradictions discovered by Marx in the evolution of capitalism. Sec.
IV., "Outlines of the Economic Doctrine." Chapter 8, "Economic
Contradictions."
[2] Marx, in "The Holy Family" (1844), reprinted by Mehring in the
"Collected Works or Literary Remains of Marx and Engels," vol. II., p.
132.
[3] After the death of Hegel differences of opinion arose among his
disciples, chiefly with respect to his doctrines of the Deity,
immortality and the personality of Christ. One section, the so-called
"Right Wing," inclined to orthodoxy on these questions. In opposition
to them stood the "Young Hegelians," the progressive "Left Wing." To
this section belonged Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and
Strauss, author of the "Life of Jesus."
The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx
I.
PARENTS AND FRIENDS.
I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP.
Karl Heinrich Marx first saw the light of day in Treves on May 5,
1818. His father, an enlightened, fine feeling, and philanthropic Jew,
was a Jurist who had slowly risen from the humble circumstances of a
German Rabbi family and acquired a respectable practice, but who never
learnt the art of making money. His mother was a Dutchwoman, and came
of a Rabbi family called Pressburg, which, as the name indicates, had
emigrated from Pressburg, in Hungary, to Holland, in the seventeenth
century. She spoke German very imperfectly. Marx has handed on to us
one of her sayings, "If Karl made a lot of Capital, instead of writing
a lot about Capital, it would have been much better." The Marxes had
several children, of whom Karl alone showed special mental gifts.
In the year 1824 the family embraced Christianity. The baptism of Jews
was at that time no longer a rarity. The enlightenment of the last
half of the eighteenth century had undermined the dogmatic beliefs of
many cultured Jews, and the succeeding period of German Christian
Romanticism brought a strengthening and idealising of Christianity and
of national feeling, from which, for practical just as much as for
spiritual reasons, the Jews who had renounced their own religion could
not escape. They were completely assimilated, felt and thought like
the rest of their Christian and German fellow-citizens. Marx's father
felt himself to be a good Prussian, and once recommended his son to
compose an ode, in the grand style, on Napoleon's downfall and
Prussia's victory. Karl did not, in truth, follow his father's advice,
but from that time of Christian enthusiasm and German patriotic
sentiment until his life's end, there remained with him an anti-Jewish
prejudice; the Jew was generally to him either a usurer or a cadger.
Karl was sent to the grammar school in his native town, leaving with a
highly creditable record. The school was, however, not the only place
where he developed his mind. During his school years he used to
frequent the house of the Government Privy Councillor, L. von
Westphalen, a highly cultured Prussian official, whose favourite poets
were Homer and Shakespeare, and who followed attentively the
intellectual tendencies of his time. Although he had already reached
advanced age, he liked to converse with the precocious youth, and to
influence his mental growth. Marx honoured him as a fatherly friend
"who welcomes every progressive movement with the enthusiasm and sober
judgment of a lover of truth, and who is a living proof that Idealism
is no imagination, but the truth."--(Dedication of Marx's doctor
thesis.)
After quitting the public school, Marx went to the University of Bonn,
in order to study jurisprudence, according to his father's wishes.
After a year of the merry life of a student, he removed in the autumn
of 1836 to Berlin University, the centre of culture and truth, as
Hegel had called it in his Inaugural Lecture (1818). Before his
departure for Berlin, he had become secretly engaged to Jenny Von
Westphalen, the daughter of his fatherly friend, a woman distinguished
alike for beauty, culture, and strength of character.
II. STUDENT.
In Berlin, Marx threw himself into the study of Philosophy,
Jurisprudence, History, Geography, Literature, the History of Art,
etc. He had a Faust-like thirst for truth, and his appetite for work
was insatiable; in these matters only superlatives can be used to
describe, Marx. In one of his poems dating, from this period, he says
of himself:
"Ne'er can I perform in calmness
What has seized my soul with might,
But must strive and struggle onward
In a ceaseless, restless flight.
All divine, enhancing graces
Would I make of life a part;
Penetrate the realms of science,
Grasp the joys of Song and Art."
Giving up all social intercourse, he worked night and day, making
abstracts of what he read, translating from Greek and Latin, working
at philosophical systems, setting down a considerable number of his
own thoughts, and drafting outlines of philosophy or jurisprudence, as
well as writing three volumes of poems. The year 1837 marks one of the
critical periods of Marx's intellectual development; it was a time of
vacillation and ferment and of internal struggle, at the end of which
he found refuge in the Hegelian dialectics. In so doing he turned his
back on the abstract idealism of Kant and Fichte, and made the first
step towards reality; and indeed at that time Marx firmly believed
that Hegel actually stood for reality. In a somewhat lengthy letter
dated November 10, 1837, a truly human document, Marx gives his father
an account of his intense activity during that remarkable period,
comprising his first two terms at the University of Berlin, when he
was still so very young:
"DEAR FATHER,
"There are times which are landmarks in our lives; and they not
only mark off a phase that has passed, but, at the same time,
point out clearly our new direction. At such turning points we
feel impelled to make a critical survey of the past and the
present, so as to attain to a clear knowledge of our actual
position. Nay, mankind itself, as all history shows, loves to
indulge in this retrospection and contemplation, and thereby
often appears to be going backward or standing still, when after
all it has only thrown itself back in its armchair, the better
to apprehend itself, to grasp its own doings, and to penetrate
into the workings of the spirit.
"The individual, however, becomes lyrical at such times; for
every metamorphosis is in part an elegy on the past and in part
the prologue of a great new poem that is striving for permanent
expression in a chaos of resplendent but fleeting colours. Be
that as it may, we would fain set up a monument to our past
experiences that they may regain in memory the significance
which they have lost in the active affairs of life: and what
more fitting way can we find of doing that than by bringing them
and laying them before the hearts of our parents!
"And so now, when I take stock of the year which I have just
spent here, and in so doing answer your very welcome letter from
Ems, let me consider my position, in the same way as I look on
life altogether, as the embodiment of a spiritual force that
seeks expression in every direction: in science, in art, and in
one's own personality.... On my arrival in Berlin I broke off
all my former connections, paid visits rarely and unwillingly,
and sought to bury myself in science and art.... In accordance
with my ideas at the time, poetry must of necessity be my first
concern, or at least the most agreeable of my pursuits, and the
one for which I most cared; but, as might be expected from my
disposition and the whole trend of my development, it was purely
idealistic. Next I had to study jurisprudence, and above all I
felt a strong impulse to grapple with philosophy. Both studies,
however, were so interwoven that on the one hand I worked
through the Jurist's Heineccius and Thibaut and the Sources
docilely and quite uncritically, translating, for instance, the
first two books of the Pandects of Justinian, while on the other
hand I attempted to evolve a philosophy of law in the sphere of
jurisprudence. By way of introduction I laid down a few
metaphysical principles, and carried this unfortunate work as
far as Public Rights, in all about 300 sheets.
"In this, however, more than in anything else, the conflict
between what is and what ought to be, which is peculiar to
Idealism, made itself disagreeably prominent. In the first place
there was what I had so graciously christened the Metaphysics of
Law, i.e., first principles, reflections, definitions, standing
aloof from all established jurisprudence and from every actual
form of legal practice. Then the unscientific form of
mathematical dogmatism in which there is so much beating about
the bush, so much diffuse argumentation without any fruitful
development or vital creation, hindered me from the outset from
arriving at the Truth. A triangle may be constructed and
reasoned about by the mathematician; it is a mere spatial
concept and does not of itself undergo any further evolution; it
must be brought in conjunction with something else, when it
requires other properties, and thus by placing the same thing in
various relationships we are enabled to deduce new relationships
and new truths. Whereas in the concrete expression of the mental
life as we have it in Law, in the State, in Nature, and in the
whole of philosophy, the object of our study must be considered
in its development.... The individual's reason must proceed with
its self-contradiction until it discovers its own unity."
In this we perceive the first trace of the Hegelian dialectic in Marx.
We see rigid geometrical forms contrasted with the continually
evolving organism, with social forms and human institutions. Marx had
put up a stout resistance against the influence of the Hegelian
philosophy; nay, he had even hated it and had made mighty efforts to
cling faithfully to his idealism, but in the end he, too, must fall
under the spell of the idea of evolution, in the form which it then
assumed in Hegelian speculation in Germany.
Marx then goes on to speak of his legal studies as well as of his
poems, and thus continues:
"As a result of these various activities I passed many sleepless
nights during my first term, engaged in many battles, and had to
endure much mental and physical excitement; and at the end of it
all I found myself not very much better off, having in the
meanwhile neglected nature, art and society, and spurned
pleasure: such, indeed, was the comment which my body seemed to
make. My doctor advised me to try the country, and so, having
for the first time passed through the whole length of the city,
I found myself before the gate on the Stralau Road.... From the
idealism which I had cherished so long I fell to seeking the
ideal in reality itself. Whereas before the gods had dwelt above
the earth, they had now become its very centre.
"I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the strange, rugged
melody of which had not pleased me. Once again I wished to dive
into the depths of the sea, this time with the resolute
intention of finding a spiritual nature just as essential,
concrete, and perfect as the physical, and instead of indulging
in intellectual gymnastics, bringing up pure pearls into the
sunlight.
"I wrote about 24 sheets of a dialogue entitled 'Cleantes or on
the Source and Inevitable Development of Philosophy.' In this,
art and science, which had hitherto been kept asunder, were to
some extent blended, and bold adventurer that I was, I even set
about the task of evolving a philosophical, dialectical
exposition of the nature of the Deity as it is manifested in a
pure concept, in religion, in nature, and in history. My last
thesis was the beginning of the Hegelian system; and this work,
in course of which I had to make some acquaintance with science,
Schelling and history, and which had occasioned me an infinite
amount of hard thinking, delivers me like a faithless siren into
the hands of the enemy....
"Upset by Jenny's illness and by the fruitlessness and utter
failure of my intellectual labours, and torn with vexation at
having to make into my idol a view which I had hated, I fell
ill, as I have already told you in a previous letter. On my
recovery I burnt all my poems and material for projected short
stories in the vain belief that I could give all that up; and,
to be sure, so far I have not given cause to gainsay it.
"During my illness I had made acquaintance with Hegel from
beginning to end, as also with most of his disciples. Through
frequent meetings with friends in Stralau I got an introduction
into a Graduates' Club, in which were a number of professors and
Dr. Rutenberg, the closest of my Berlin friends. In the
discussions that took place many conflicting views were put
forward, and more and more securely did I get involved in the
meshes of the new philosophy which I had sought to escape; but
everything articulate in me was put to silence, a veritable
ironical rage fell upon me, as well it might after so much
negation."--("Neue Zeit," 16th year, Vol. I., No. 1.)
His father was anything but pleased with this letter. He reproached
Karl with the aimless and discursive way in which he worked. He had
expected that these Berlin studies would lead to something more than
breeding monstrosities and destroying them again. He believed that
Karl would, before everything else, have considered his future career,
that he would have devoted all his attention to the lectures in his
course, that he would have cultivated the acquaintance of people in
authority, that he would have been economical, and that he would have
avoided all philosophical extravagances. He refers him to the example
of his fellow students who attend their lectures regularly and have an
eye to their future:
"Indeed these young men sleep quite peacefully except when they
now and then devote the whole or part of a night to pleasure,
whereas my clever and gifted son Karl passes wretched sleepless
nights, wearying body and mind with cheerless study, forbearing
all pleasures with the sole object of applying himself to
abstruse studies: but what he builds to-day he destroys again
to-morrow, and in the end he finds that he has destroyed what he
already had, without having gained anything from other people.
At last the body begins to ail and the mind gets confused,
whilst these ordinary folks steal along in easy marches, and
attain their goal if not better at least more comfortably than
those who contemn youthful pleasures and undermine their health
in order to snatch at the ghost of erudition, which they could
probably have exorcised more successfully in an hour spent in
the society of competent men--with social enjoyment into the
bargain!"
In spite of his unbounded love for his father, Marx could not deviate
from the path which he had chosen. Those deeper natures who, after
having lost their religious beliefs, have the good fortune to attain
to a philosophical or scientific conception of the universe, do not
easily shrink from a conflict between filial affection and loyalty to
new convictions. Nor was Marx allured by the prospects of a
distinguished official career. Indeed his fighting temperament would
never have admitted of that. He wrote the lines:
Therefore let us, all things daring,
Never from our task recede;
Never sink in sullen silence,
Paralysed in will and deed.
Let us not in base subjection
Brood away our fearful life,
When with deed and aspiration
We might enter in the strife.
His stay in Stralau had the most beneficial effects on his health. He
worked strenuously at his newly-acquired philosophical convictions,
and for this his relations with the members of the Graduates' Club
stood him in good stead, more especially his acquaintance with Bruno
Bauer, a lecturer in theology, and Friedrich Köppen, a master in a
grammar school, who in spite of difference of age and position treated
him as an equal. Marx gave up all thought of an official career, and
looked forward to obtaining a lectureship in some university or
other. His father reconciled himself to the new studies and strivings
of his son; he was, however, not destined to rejoice at Karl's
subsequent achievements. After a short illness he died in May, 1838,
at the age of fifty-six.
Marx then gave up altogether the study of jurisprudence, and worked
all the more assiduously at the perfecting of his philosophical
knowledge, preparing himself for his degree examination in order--at
the instigation of Bruno Bauer--to get himself admitted as quickly as
possible as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bauer
himself expected to be made Professor of Theology in Bonn after having
served as lecturer in Berlin from 1834 to 1839 and in Bonn during the
year 1840. Marx wrote a thesis on the Natural Philosophies of
Democritus and Epicurus, and in 1841 the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy was conferred on him at Jena. He then went over to his
friend Bauer in Bonn, where he thought to begin his career as
lecturer. Meanwhile his hopes had disappeared. Prussian universities
were at that time no places for free inquirers. It was not even
possible for Bauer to obtain a professorship; still less could Marx,
who was much more violent in the expression of his opinions, reckon on
an academic career. His only way out of this blind alley was
free-lance journalism, and for this an opportunity soon presented
itself.
III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE.
Marx made his entry into public life with a thorough philosophical
training and with an irrestrainable impulse to enter into the
struggle for the spiritual freedom of Germany. By spiritual freedom he
understood first and foremost freedom in religion and liberalism in
politics. He was, too, perfectly clear as to the instrument to be
used: it was criticism. The positive and rigid having become
ineffectual and unreasonable, is to fall before the weapon of
criticism and so make room for a living stream of thought and being,
or as Marx himself expressed it in 1844, "to make the petrified
conditions dance by singing to them their own tune." Their own tune
is, of course, the dialectic. Criticism, generally speaking, was the
weapon of the Young Hegelians. Criticism is negation, sweeping away
existing conditions and prevailing dogmas to make a clear path for
life. Not the setting up of new principles or new dogmas, but the
clearing away of the old dogmas is the task of the Young Hegelians.
For if dialectic be rightly understood, criticism or negation is the
best positive work. Criticism finds expression, above all, in
polemics, in the literal meaning of waging war--ruthless war--against
the unreal for the purpose of shaking up one's contemporaries.
After Marx had given up all hope of an academic career, the only field
of labour that remained open to him was, as we have already said, that
of journalism. His material circumstances compelled him, moreover, to
consider the question of an independent livelihood. Just about this
time the Liberals in the Rhine provinces took up a scheme for the
foundation of a newspaper, the object of which was to prepare the way
for conditions of greater freedom. The necessary money was soon
procured. Significantly enough, Young Hegelians were kept in view for
editors and contributors. On the first of January, 1842, the first
number of the _Rheinische Zeitung_ was published at Cologne. The
editor was Dr. Rutenberg, who had formed an intimate friendship with
Marx at the time the latter was attending the University of Berlin;
and so Marx, then in Bonn, was also invited to contribute. He accepted
the invitation, and his essays brought him to the notice of Arnold
Ruge, who likewise invited him to take part in his literary
undertakings in conjunction with Feuerbach, Bauer, Moses Hess, and
others. Marx's essays were greatly appreciated, too, by the readers of
the _Rheinische Zeitung_, so that in October, 1842, on the retirement
of Rutenberg, he was called to the editorial chair of that journal. In
his new position he had to deal with a series of economic and
political questions which, no doubt, with a less conscientious editor
would have occasioned little hard thinking, but which for Marx showed
the need of a thorough study of political economy and Socialism. In
October, 1842, a congress of French and German intellectuals was held
in Strasburg, and amongst other things French Socialist theories were
discussed. Likewise in the Rhine provinces arose questions concerning
landed property and taxes, which had to be dealt with from the
editorial chair, questions which were not to be answered by a purely
philosophical knowledge. Besides, the censorship made the way hard for
a paper conducted with such critical acumen, and did not allow the
editor to fulfil his real mission. In the preface to "The Critique of
Political Economy" (1859) Marx gives a short sketch of his editorial
life:
"As editor of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, in 1842 and 1843 I came up,
for the first time, against the difficulty of having to take part in
the controversy over so-called material interests. The proceedings of
the Diet of the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealing and
parcelling out of landed property, and their action towards the
farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastly debates on Free Trade and
Protection, gave the first stimulus to my investigation of economic
questions. On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism and
Communism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at that time made itself
heard in the columns of the _Rheinische Zeitung_. I declared myself
against superficiality, confessing, however, at the same time that the
studies I had made so far did not allow me to venture any judgment of
my own on the significance of the French tendencies. I readily took
advantage of the illusion cherished by the directors of the
_Rheinische Zeitung_, who believed they could reverse the death
sentence passed on that journal as a result of weak management, in
order to withdraw from the public platform into my study."
And so the intellectual need which he felt of studying economics and
Socialism, as well as his thirst for free, unfettered activity,
resulted in Marx's retirement from his post as editor, although he was
about to enter upon married life and had to make provision for his own
household. But he was from the beginning determined to subordinate his
material existence to his spiritual aspirations.
II.
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM.
I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS.
Between the years 1843 and 1844 we have the second and probably the
most important critical period in the intellectual development of
Marx. In 1837 he had become a disciple of Hegel, into whose philosophy
he penetrated deeper and deeper during the two years which ensued.
Between 1843 and 1844 he became a Socialist, and in the following two
years he laid the foundations of those social and historical doctrines
associated with his name. Of the way he came to be a Socialist and by
what studies he was led to Socialism, we know nothing. All that can be
said is that in the summer of 1848 he must have pursued the reading of
French Socialist literature just as assiduously as he did the study of
Hegel in 1837. In his letters to Arnold Ruge, written about 1843, and
printed in the Franco-German Year Books, we find a few passages which
bear witness to his sudden turnover. In a letter from Cologne (May,
1843) he remarks: "This system of acquisition and commercialism, of
possession and of the exploitation of mankind, is leading even more
swiftly than the increase of population to a breach within the present
society, which the old system cannot heal, because indeed it has not
the power either to heal or create, but only to exist and enjoy."
That is still in the sentimental vein, and anything but dialectical
criticism. In the following few months, however, he made surprisingly
rapid progress towards the fundamental ideas of that conception of
history and society, which later on came to be known as Marxism, and
which he almost built up into a complete system during those restless
years of exuberant creative activity, 1845-46. In a letter from
Kreuznach, dated September, 1843, he shows already an acquaintance
with Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, Weitling, etc., and sees his task not
in the setting up of Utopias but in the criticism of political and
social conditions, "in interpreting the struggles and aspirations of
the age." And by the winter of 1843 he has already advanced so much as
to be able to write the introduction to the criticism of Hegel's
"Philosophy of Law," which is one of the boldest and most brilliant of
his essays. He deals with the question of a German revolution, and
asks which is the class that could bring about the liberation of
Germany. His answer is that the positive conditions for the German
revolution and liberation are to be sought "in the formation of a
class in chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but
which is not of it, of an order which shall break up all orders. The
product of this dissolution of society reduced to a special order is
the proletariat. The proletariat arises in Germany only with the
beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting
from natural circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the
masses who are held down by the weight of the social system but the
multitude arising from the acute break-up of society--especially of
the middle class--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the
proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things,
it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in
itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the
proletariat desires the negation of private property, it is merely
elevating to a general principle of society what it already
involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society."
Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removed with his young wife
in October, 1843, in order to take up the editorship of the
Franco-German Year Books founded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed
to Ruge from Kreuznach in September, 1843, Marx summed up the program
of this periodical as follows: "If the shaping of the future and its
final reconstruction is not our business, yet it is all the more
evident what we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, I mean the
fearless criticism of all existing institutions--fearless in the sense
that it does not flinch either from its logical consequences or from
the conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not with those
who would have us set up the standard of dogmatism; far from it; we
should rather try to give what help we can to those who are involved
in dogma, so that they may realise the implications of their own
principles. So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet, Dezamy,
Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstraction.... Moreover, we want
to work upon our contemporaries, and particularly on our German
contemporaries. The question is: How is that to be done? Two factors
cannot be ignored. In the first place religion, in the second place
politics, are the two things which claim most attention in the Germany
of to-day.... As far as everyday life is concerned, the political
State, even where it has not been consciously perfected through
Socialist demands, exactly fulfils, in all its modern forms, the
demands of reason. Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason
everywhere as having been realised. But in so doing it lands itself
everywhere in the contradiction between its ideal purpose and its real
achievements. Out of this conflict, therefore, of the political State
with itself social truth is evolved."
Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the State as the
embodiment of reason and morality did not accord well with the
constitution and the working of the actual State. And Marx goes on to
remark that in its history the political State is the expression of
the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society. It is not
true, then, as the French and English Utopians have thought, that the
treatment of political questions is beneath the dignity of Socialists.
Rather is it work of this kind which leads into party conflict and
away from the abstract theory. "We do not then proclaim to the world
in doctrinaire fashion any new principle: 'This is the truth, bow down
before it!' We do not say: 'Refrain from strife, it is foolishness!'
We only make clear to men for what they are really struggling, and to
the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or not."
That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein. The thinker
propounds no fresh problems, brings forward no abstract dogmas, but
awakens an understanding for the growth of the future out of the past,
inspiring the political and social warriors with the consciousness of
their own action.
II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS.
Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring,
1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the
criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of
Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a
comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political
Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died
in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September,
1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning
of the lifelong intimate friendship between the two men, who without a
close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.
Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought,
but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he
enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have
attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand,
Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man,
eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not
endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual
crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual
association with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained
little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete
saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all
eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844
Engels was a Utopian--until Marx explained to him the meaning of
political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the
statics and dynamics of the history of civilised mankind. Engels'
"Criticism of Political Economy" is a very noteworthy performance for
a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise
above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon.
Engels' contributions to Owen's "New Moral World" (1843-44) are indeed
more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as
matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. "The
System of Economic Contradictions," on which Proudhon was working when
Engels published his "Outlines," is couched, as far as the critical
side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels.
Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-class economic
system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of
society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the
Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had,
independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the
Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found
salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should
carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels,
on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom
he rewarded with a lifelong friendship and devotion, which proved to
be Marx's salvation. Without Engels' literary and financial help,
Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and
uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in
exile.
III. CONTROVERSIES WITH BAUER AND RUGE.
After the Franco-German Year Books had been discontinued, Marx,
recognising the importance of economics, studied English and French
systems of political economy with still greater zeal than before, and
continued his studies in Socialism and history with remarkable
steadiness of purpose. No longer now did he show signs of hesitation
or wavering; he knew exactly what he wanted. He had left behind him
that period of ideological speculation when he was still a disciple of
Hegel, and he was impelled, as in the autumn of 1837, to envisage,
from his new standpoint, the past and the future. He takes such a
survey in "The Holy Family," which had its genesis in the autumn of
1844, and to which Engels also furnished a slight contribution. It is
a settling of accounts with his former friend and master, Bruno Bauer,
and his brother Edgar, who had not been able to break away from Hegel.
The aim of the book was to force the Young Hegelians into the path of
social criticism, to urge them forward and prevent them from falling
into stereotyped and abstract ways of thinking. It is not easy
reading. In it Marx has compressed the knowledge he then had of
philosophy, history, economics, and Socialism in concentrated and
sharply-cut form. Besides the excellent sketch of English and French
materialism, which among other things discloses in a few short but
pregnant sentences the connection between this and English and French
Socialism, "The Holy Family" contains the germs of the materialistic
conception of history as well as the first attempt to give a social
revolutionary interpretation to the class struggle between Capital and
Labour. In the Introduction to the present book a quotation from "The
Holy Family" has been given. Speaking against Bauer's conception of
history, Marx says: "Or can he believe that he has arrived even at the
beginning of a knowledge of historical reality so long as he excludes
science and industry from the historical movements? Or does he really
think that he can understand any period without having studied, for
example, the industries of that period, the immediate means of
production of life itself?... In the same way as he separated thought
from the senses, the soul from the body, and himself from the world,
so he separates history from science and industry, and he does not see
the birthplace of history in coarse, material production upon earth
but in the nebulous constructions in the heavens."--("Posthumous
Works," Vol. II., pp. 259-60.)
Bruno Bauer, who believed in the world-swaying might of the idea, but
would not concede that the masses had any power whatever, wrote: "All
the great movements of history up to this time were therefore doomed
to failure and could not have lasting success, because the masses had
taken an interest in them and inspired them--or they must come to a
lamentable conclusion because the underlying idea was of such a nature
that a superficial apprehension of it must suffice, that is to say, it
must reckon on the approval of the masses."
Marx's answer to this was that "the great historical movements had
been always determined by mass interests, and only in so far as they
represented these interests could the ideas prevail in these
movements; otherwise the ideas might indeed stir up enthusiasm, but
they could not achieve any results. The idea always fell into
disrepute in so far as it differed from the interest. On the other
hand, it is easy to understand that, when it makes its first
appearance on the world-stage, every mass interest working itself out
in history far exceeds, as an idea or in its presentation, its actual
limits and identifies itself purely and simply with the interest of
humanity. Thus the idea of the French Revolution not only took hold of
the middle classes, in whose interest it manifested itself in great
movements, but it also aroused enthusiasm in the labouring masses, for
whose conditions of existence it could do nothing. As history has
shown, then, ideas have only had effective results in so far as they
corresponded to class interests. The enthusiasm, to which such ideas
gave birth, arose from the illusion that these ideas signified the
liberation of mankind in general."--("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp.
181-3.)
In August, 1844, Marx published under the title "Marginal Notes" in
the Paris _Vorwärts_ a lengthy polemic against Ruge, which is a
defence of Socialism and revolution and takes the part of the German
proletariat against Ruge. "As regards the stage of culture or the
capacity for culture of the German workers, let me refer to Weitling's
clever writings, which in their theoretical aspect often surpass those
of Proudhon, however much they may fall behind them in execution.
Where would the middle classes, their scholars and philosophers
included, be able to show a work like Weitling's 'Guarantees of Peace
and Concord' bearing on the question of emancipation? If one compares
the insipid, spiritless mediocrity of German political literature with
this unconstrained and brilliant literary début of the German workers,
if one compares these gigantic baby shoes of the proletariat with the
dwarfishness of the worn-out political shoes of the German middle
classes, one can only prophesy an athletic stature for the German
Cinderella. One must admit that the German proletariat is the
philosopher of the European proletariat, just as the English
proletariat is its political economist and the French proletariat its
politician. One must admit that Germany is destined to play just as
classic a rôle in the social revolution as it is incompetent to play
one in the political. For, as the impotence of the German middle
classes is the political impotence of Germany, so the capacity of the
German proletariat--even leaving out of account German philosophy--is
the social capacity of Germany."
At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mix among the German
working classes resident in Paris, who clung to the various Socialist
and Anarchist doctrines which then held sway, and he sought to
influence them according to his own ideas. With Heine, too, who at
that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and
not unfruitful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contact
with Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to make familiar with Hegelian
philosophy. Already in his first work, "What is Property?" (1840)
Proudhon had played with Hegelian formulæ, and Marx probably believed
that he could win him over to Socialism. Proudhon, who, like the
German Weitling, sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activity
as a social theorist with the above-mentioned work, which had a
stimulating effect on Marx and on German Socialists in general, all
the more so as Proudhon manifested some acquaintance with classical
German philosophy. In this book ("What is Property?" German edition,
1844, p. 289) he sums up the whole matter as follows: "Expressing this
according to the Hegelian formula, I should say that Communism, the
first kind, the first determination of social life, is the first link
in social evolution, the _thesis_; property is the antagonistic
principle, the _antithesis_; if only we can get the third factor, the
_synthesis_, the question is solved. This synthesis comes about only
through the cancelling of the thesis by the antithesis; one must
therefore in the last instance examine its characteristics, discard
what is anti-social, and in the union of the remaining two is then
seen the real kind of human social life."
That was indeed a superficial conception of Hegelian dialectics, for
what Proudhon wanted to find was not a synthesis but a combination;
still for a French working man it was a smart performance to have
manipulated German philosophical formulæ, and would justify the most
sanguine hopes. Marx did not want to let this opportunity slip, and in
"debates both late and long" he discussed Hegelian philosophy with
Proudhon.--(Marx: "The Poverty of Philosophy," German edition,
Stuttgart, 1885, p. 29.)
In the midst of this activity, however, Marx and other German
contributors to the Paris _Vorwärts_ were expelled from France in
January, 1845, at the instigation of the Prussian Government. Marx
packed up his traps and left for Brussels, where he lived, with short
interruptions, until the outbreak of the European Revolution in
February, 1848. During his sojourn in Brussels his time was occupied
mainly with economic studies, for which Engels placed his library of
works on political economy at his disposal. Marx embodied the result
of these studies in the criticism directed against Proudhon in his
"Misère de la Philosophie" (Poverty of Philosophy), published in 1847.
IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON.
Marx's "Misère de la Philosophie" indicates the culmination of the
fist phase of his creative work. In this critical review he makes his
position clear with respect not only to Proudhon but to Utopian
Socialism in general. It marks also the turning point in the studies
of Marx: English political economy occupied henceforth the place which
German philosophy had held. The anti-Proudhon controversy is therefore
worthy of a fuller treatment.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (b. 1809 in Besançon, d. 1865 in Paris) was one
of the most gifted and most distinguished of social philosophers which
the modern proletariat has produced. He was originally a compositor,
like his similarly minded English contemporary, John Francis Bray, the
author of "Labour's Wrongs," published in 1839, but he had a much
greater inclination for study and a more fruitful literary talent. He
managed to acquire, self-taught, a knowledge of the classical
languages, of mathematics and of science, read assiduously but
indiscriminately works on economics, philosophy, and history, and
applied himself to social criticism. It is rare for a working man in
the West of Europe to feel impelled to make an acquaintance with Kant,
Hegel, and Feuerbach as Proudhon did through French translations and
through intercourse with German scholars in Paris. He possessed the
noble ambition of blending French sprightliness with German
thoroughness. But self-instruction failed to give him that
intellectual training which is more valuable than knowledge, and which
alone gives the power to order and to utilise the information
acquired, as well as to submit one's own work to self-criticism. The
value of a systematic education does not consist in the main in the
acquisition of knowledge but in the training of our intellectual
faculties as instruments of inquiry and apprehension, of methodical
thinking and of sound judgment, to enable us to find our bearings more
easily in the chaos of phenomena, experiences, and ideas. A
self-taught man may no doubt attain to this degree of culture, but
only if his first attempts at independent creative work are submitted
to a strict but kindly criticism, which makes him discipline his
thoughts. This was not the case with Proudhon; he lacked mental
self-discipline. His first work, "What is Property?" (1840) brought
him immediate recognition and strengthened him in his high opinion of
his knowledge and his powers, even to the point of making him
conceited. When, for example, the French historian, Michelet,
disapproved of his dictum, "Property is robbery," Proudhon replied,
"Not twice in a thousand years does one come across a pronouncement
like that."--("Economic Contradictions," Leipzig, 1847. Vol. II., p.
301.) And yet the idea is as old as Communism itself. Besides all
this, the vivacity and exuberance of language for which Proudhon was
noted easily blinded him to the shortcomings of his intellectual
culture. Thus it often happened that he rediscovered ideas of his
predecessors and published them to the world with naïve pride. Through
page after page of argument he holds the reader in expectation of the
explanation, which he is about to give, of the nature of value, which
he rightly characterises as the "corner-stone of political economy."
At last he will disclose the secret: "It is time to make ourselves
acquainted with this power. This power ... is _labour_." His main
work, "The System of Economic Contradictions," swarms with
philosophical formulæ and expressions like thesis, antithesis,
antinomies, synthesis, dialectics, induction, syllogisms, etc., as
also with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew etymologies; it often wanders into
irrelevant theological and philosophical digressions and side issues,
not so much with the intention of parading the author's knowledge as
from his lack of intellectual discipline and insufficient command of
his material. The work in question was to combine German philosophy
with French and English political economy, and its author believed
that it would secure for him before everything else the admiration of
the German Socialists, especially of Marx. He drew the latter's
attention to it by letter, and awaited his "rigorous criticism." The
criticism came in "Misère de la Philosophie" (Brussels, 1847), but it
could no longer fulfil its purpose, as the fundamental difference
between the two men had already widened to a gulf that could not be
bridged. Marx had almost completed his materialistic, logical, and
revolutionary Socialism, Proudhon had laid the foundations of his
peaceful Anarchism with its federative economic basis. With his
searching analysis, his systematised knowledge, and his great
indignation at the presumptuous attacks on every Socialist school and
leader, Marx sat in judgment upon Proudhon, exposing him as a
dilettante in philosophy and economics, and at the same time
sketching in outline his own conception of history and economics.
Marx's verdict is damning, yet one cannot but acknowledge that
Proudhon, in spite of his obvious insufficiency, had endeavoured,
honestly and zealously, to extricate himself from Capitalism as well
as from Utopianism, and to outline a scheme for an economic order, in
which men, such as he had found them, might lead a free, industrious,
and righteous life. The task which Proudhon had set himself was the
same as that which engaged the attention of Marx, the criticism of
political economy and of the sentimental Utopian Socialism. That is
the key-note of Proudhon's system, and it is sounded in almost every
chapter. He lacked, however, the requisite knowledge and the
historical sense which alone could have made him equal to his task.
The whole of his criticism consists virtually in the complaint that
riches and poverty accumulate side by side, and that the economic
categories--use value, exchange value, division of labour,
competition, monopoly, machinery, property, ground rent, credit, tax,
etc.--manifest contradictions. Proudhon's special problem was the
following: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods to the
value, let us say, of 20 milliards. But if the workers, as consumers,
wish to buy back these goods they have to pay 25 milliards. The
workers are thus cheated out of a fifth. That is a terrible
contradiction."--("What is Property?" Chap. IV.; "Economic
Contradictions," Vol. I., pp. 292-93.) This statement of the problem
shows that Proudhon had no inkling of the essential features of the
question of value, in spite of the fact that he cites Adam Smith,
David Ricardo, etc., whom he must therefore have read. Had he really
understood these economists and taken up his critical attitude towards
them from the standpoint of justice, he would have stated the problem
somewhat as follows: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods
to the value, say, of 20 milliards. For their work, however, they
receive as wages a quantity of goods of the value of only 10 or 12
milliards. Is that just?" Only this way of stating the question could
possibly have revealed to him the nature of wages, of value, of
profit, of capital and its contradictions. Proudhon sees the
perpetration of fraud or robbery in the sphere of exchange and not in
that of production, and he does not ask himself how, if labour
produces goods to the value of only 20 milliards, they can be
exchanged at a value of 25 milliards, and what is responsible for the
increase of five milliards. The other contradictions which he brings
forward are not indeed new, but they are ingeniously treated. For
example: the essence of exchange-value is labour, which creates
wealth; but the more the wealth produced, the less becomes its
exchange-value. Or this: the division of labour is, according to
Smith, one of the most effective means of increasing wealth, but the
further the division of labour proceeds the lower sinks the workman,
being reduced to the level of an unintelligent automaton engaged in
the performance of a fractional operation. The same thing holds good
for machinery. So, too, competition stimulates effort, but brings much
misery in its train by leading to adulteration, sharp practices, and
strife between man and man. Further, taxation should be proportional
to riches, in reality it is proportional to poverty. Or again, private
ownership of land ought to increase productivity; in practice it
deprives the farmer of the land. In this way he runs to earth the
contradictions in political economy, and so we find everywhere the
words thesis and anti-thesis or antinomies (contradictions between two
well-established propositions). And out of this contradiction springs
poverty. The solution or the synthesis is the creation of an economic
order which shall preserve the good elements in this category and
eliminate the bad ones, and so satisfy the demands of justice. And
that is what Socialism cannot do. "For the economic order is based
upon calculations of an inexorable justice and not upon those angelic
sentiments of brotherhood, sacrifice, and love which so many
well-meaning Socialists of the present time are endeavouring to awake
in the people. It is useless for them to preach, after the example of
Jesus Christ, the necessity for sacrifice, and to set an example of it
in their own lives: selfishness is stronger than they and can only be
restrained by rigid justice and immutable economic law. Humanitarian
enthusiasm may cause upheavals which are conducive to the progress of
civilisation, but such emotional crises, like the fluctuations in
value, simply result in the establishing of law and order on a more
rigid and more restricted basis. Nature or the Deity planted mistrust
in our hearts, having no faith in the love of man for his fellow men;
and though I say it to the shame of the human conscience (for our
hypocrisy must be confronted with it sooner or later), every
disclosure which science has made to us concerning the designs of
providence with respect to the progress of society points to a deeply
rooted hatred of mankind on God's part."--("System of Economic
Contradictions or the Philosophy of Poverty," Vol. I., p. 107.) Just
as severely does he denounce the institution of Trade Unionism and
its methods of warfare, together with State politics, as indeed the
working of class organisation and of the State generally. The only way
to realise social justice is to create a society of producers who
exchange their goods among one another according to their equivalents
in labour and carry on work in adequate relationship to the production
of wealth, or, to put it clearly, to establish an order where supply
and demand balance one another.
Marx's answer to the "Philosophy of Poverty" is indicated at once by
the title "The Poverty of Philosophy." He deals first of all with the
economic details of Proudhon's work, and proves with documentary
evidence that the theses and antitheses it contains partly spring from
a half-understood reading of English and French political economists,
and in part have been taken direct from the English Communists. Marx
already displays in this section an extensive knowledge of economic
literature. Then he confronts Proudhon's philosophical and social
theories with his own deductions and gives many positive results.
Marx's main object was to induce the Socialists to give up their
Utopianism and think in terms of realism, and to regard social and
economic _categories_ in their historical setting:
"Economic _categories_ are only the theoretical expressions, ideal
conceptions of the conditions of production obtaining in society....
Proudhon has grasped well enough that men manufacture cloth, linen,
etc., under certain conditions of production. But what he has not
grasped is that these social conditions themselves are just as much
human products as cloth, linen, etc. Social conditions are intimately
bound up with productive power. With the acquisition of new productive
power men change their methods of production, and with the change in
the methods of production, in the manner of obtaining a livelihood,
they change their social conditions. The hand-mill gives rise to a
society with feudal lords, the steam-mill to a society with industrial
capitalists. But the same men who shape the social conditions in
conformity with the material means of production, shape also the
principles, the ideas, the _categories_ in conformity with their
social conditions. Consequently these ideas, these _categories_, are
just as little eternal as are the conditions to which they give
expression. They are the transitory and changing products of history.
We are living in the midst of a continuous movement of growth in
productive power, of destruction of existing social conditions, of
formation of ideas."--("Poverty of Philosophy," Stuttgart, 1885, pp.
100-101.)
Here it should, above all, be noticed that Marx ascribes to
industrialism a powerful revolutionary effect, and that he
characterises the different forms of society by their different
methods of labour. Or, as he says later in "Capital," "not _what_ is
produced, but _how_ it is produced distinguishes the various forms of
society." What he means to say, then, is that ideas and systems are
limited by their time, that they are conditioned by the prevailing
means of production. To understand them one must study the times which
have preceded them, as well as investigate the ideas and systems
themselves, and find out whether new forms have not arisen which stand
in contradiction or in contrast to the old one. Or, as Marx says:
"Feudalism, too, had its proletariat--the villeinage--which contains
all the germs of the middle class. Feudal production, too, had two
contradictory elements which are likewise characterised as the 'good'
and 'bad' sides of feudalism without regard to the fact that it is
always the 'bad' side which triumphs ultimately over the 'good' side.
It is the bad side which calls into being the movement which makes
history, in that it brings the struggle to a head. If, at the time of
the supremacy of feudalism, the economists, in their enthusiasm for
knightly virtues, for the beautiful harmony between rights and duties,
for the patriarchal life of the towns, for the flourishing home
industries in the country, for the development of industry organised
in corporations, companies and guilds, in a word, for everything which
forms the finer side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of
eliminating everything which could throw a shadow on this
picture--serfdom, privileges, anarchy--where would it all have ended?
They would have destroyed every element which called forth strife,
they would have nipped in the bud the development of the middle class.
They would have set themselves the absurd problem of blotting out
history.
"When the middle class had come to the top, neither the good nor the
bad side of feudalism come into question. The productive forces, which
had been developed under feudalism through its agency, fell to its
control. All old economic forms, the legal relations between private
individuals, which corresponded to them, the political order, which
was the official expression of the old society, were shattered."
"Those Socialists and social revolutionaries who regard the hardships
and struggles of society as an absolute evil and plan the
construction of a society comprised solely of good elements, have not
grasped the meaning of the history of mankind. They think abstractly.
They misjudge both the past and the present.
"Hence to form a correct judgment of production under feudalism one
must consider it a method of production based upon contradiction. One
must show how wealth was produced within this contradiction, how
productive power developed contemporaneously with the antagonism of
classes, how one of these classes, the bad side, the social evil,
constantly increased until the material conditions for its liberation
were fully ripe.
"Does that not show clearly enough that the means of production, the
conditions under which productive power is developed, are anything but
eternal laws, that they rather correspond to a definite stage in the
evolution of mankind and of its productive power, and that a variation
in the productive power of mankind necessarily brings about a
variation in its conditions of production?
"The middle class begins with a proletariat, which in its turn is
itself a remnant of the feudal proletariat. In the course of its
historical development the middle class necessarily develops its
contradictory character, which on its first appearance is more or less
veiled, existing only in a latent form. In proportion as the middle
class develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a
modern proletariat; and a struggle arises between the proletarian
class and the middle class, a struggle which, before being felt,
observed, estimated, understood, acknowledged, and finally openly
proclaimed on both sides, issues in the meanwhile only in partial and
transitory conflicts and acts of destruction."
In a special chapter Marx shows the necessity and the historical
significance of the Trade Unions, which in spite of all the
apprehensions and warnings of Utopians and Economists the workers have
gone on establishing and perfecting, in order to be able to withstand
the domination of capital. That means the gathering together of the
divided interests and activities of the workers in a vast class
movement, standing in opposition to the middle class; which, however,
does not exclude the possibility of conflicting interests within the
classes themselves, though these shall be put aside as soon as class
is brought against class:
"From day to day it becomes clearer then that the conditions of
production, among which the middle class moves, have not a simple,
uniform character but one which involves conflicting elements; that the
same conditions which produce wealth produce also poverty; that the same
conditions which tend to the development of productive power develop
also the power of repression; that these conditions only create
bourgeois wealth, i.e., the wealth of the middle class, at the cost of
the continued destruction of the wealth of individual members of this
class and the creation of an ever-increasing proletariat."--("Poverty of
Philosophy," 1885, pp. 116-118, 177 sq.)
This antithetical character of capitalist society has for its effect
that the political economists, who are the philosophers of the
existing order, lose their bearings, while the Socialists, who are the
philosophers of the proletariat, look round for means to relieve the
distress. They condemn class struggles,[4] build Utopias and plan
schemes of salvation, whereas the only real solution, because it is
the only one which arises from the actual conditions, must be to
further the organisation of the oppressed class and make it conscious
of the objects of its struggles. For out of these struggles the new
society will arise, and that, of course, can only happen when
productive power has reached a high stage of development. Or as Marx
himself proceeds:
"An oppressed class is a vital condition of any society founded upon
class antagonism. The liberation of the oppressed class necessarily
includes, therefore, the creation of a new society. In order that the
oppressed class may be able to free itself, a stage must be reached in
which the already acquired powers of production and the prevailing
social institutions can no longer exist side by side. Of all the
instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the
revolutionary class itself. The organisation of the revolutionary
elements as a class presupposes the existence in perfected form of all
the productive forces that could in any way be developed in the bosom
of the old society. Does this mean that after the collapse of the old
order of society there will be a new class domination culminating in a
new political power? The condition of the emancipation of the working
class is the abolition of all classes, as the condition of the
emancipation of the third estate, of the middle class, was the
abolition of all the three estates. The working class will, in the
course of its evolution, replace the old middle-class society by an
association excluding classes and their antagonism, and there will no
longer be any real political power,[5] because it is just this
political power which is the official expression of class antagonism
within the community.
"Meanwhile the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a
struggle of class against class, a struggle which, when brought to its
highest expression, means a complete revolution. And can one indeed be
surprised that a society founded upon class antagonism should, at its
final dissolution, issue in brutal conflict and collision of man
against man? Let it not be said that the social movement excludes the
political. There never was a political movement which was not at the
same time a social movement.
"Only in an order of things where there are no classes and no class
antagonism will social evolution cease to be political revolution.
Until then the last word of social science on the eve of every general
reconstruction of society must ever be: 'Fight or die; bloody war or
annihilation. Thus are we confronted with the inexorable
question.'--(George Sand)."
With this battle-cry "The Poverty of Philosophy" comes to a close. It
is the prologue to the "Communist Manifesto," which in itself is but a
popular version of the positive doctrines developed in the controversy
against Proudhon.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The Socialists of those times were the Owenites and the
Fourierists, who condemned all class struggles, Trade Unionist
strikes, and Labour politics.
[5] Marx means the State.
III.
YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES.
I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES.
Marx was a revolutionary not only in the sense that he was the
representative of a new conception of society and the founder of a
theory of a new economic order, but also in the popular sense of
advocating the use of force, in which connection he looked to the
first years of the French Revolution as a model. He had a keen ear for
the revolutionary rumblings in the depths of the populace. The years
during which the elements of his new conception of society were
accumulating in his mind and shaping themselves into a system were
involved in a revolutionary atmosphere. In 1842 England witnessed the
first strike on a large scale, which threatened to extend into a
general strike and bore a political revolutionary character. In 1843
and 1844 the idea of the impending revolution was widely spread in
England. Insurrections broke out among the Silesian weavers in 1844.
In 1845 and 1846 Socialism spread rapidly on all sides in Germany, and
Socialist periodicals appeared in the industrial centres. France
swarmed with Socialist systems, Socialist novels and newspaper
articles. The spectre of Communism was abroad in Europe. The
convention of the United Assembly by Frederick William IV. at the
beginning of February, 1847, was looked upon as the harbinger of the
German Revolution. The connection between these phenomena could not
escape acute intellects. Hand in hand with the extension of industry
and the rapid construction of railways and telegraphs came
alternations of economic prosperity and crisis, poverty grew, and the
workers fought with ever-increasing bitterness against the iron law of
wages and against the scanty pay, which hardly allowed the proletariat
to eke out a bare subsistence. The cry in England was: "More
factories, more poverty," but at the same time: "The greater the
political rights of the masses, the surer becomes emancipation."
Whoever lived in England and France during these years and had
dealings with Socialism could not help feeling that political and
social revolutions were on the march.
Already in his first letter to Ruge, written from Holland in March,
1843, Marx deals with the coming revolution, and foresees, to the
astonishment of Ruge, who refused to believe it, that the Government
of Frederick William IV. was drifting towards a revolution. At that
time Marx had hardly begun his studies in Socialism; and the further
he advanced in these studies, elaborating his social dialectics and
evolving the ideas of the class struggle, the more inevitably was he
driven to the conclusion that the proletarian revolution, the seizure
of political power by the proletariat, was the indispensable
preliminary to the triumph of Communism.
Utopian Socialism stood outside the State and attempted to set up a
Socialist Commonwealth apart from the State and behind the back of the
State. Utopianism, with its moral and religious motives and mediæval
Communist traditions, was pervaded with that spirit of contempt for
the State which was characteristic of the Catholic Church during the
period of its splendour. Moreover Marx, who recognised all practical
forms of power, even if he did not always estimate them at their true
value, saw in the State an executive power which it was a question of
overturning and using as an extremely powerful instrument in the
social revolution. As a result of his excursions into politics and
French and English Socialism, Marx gave up Hegel's overstrained idea
of the State and accepted the view current in Western European thought
of the time; but he interpreted the State in the sense of the doctrine
of the class struggle as the executive council of the ruling and
possessing classes.
The impressions, the ideas, the experiences and the modes of thinking
which took root in the mind of Marx during the evolution of the
fundamental principles of his sociological and historical system
dominated the whole of his life's work.
Marxism is quite a natural growth of the revolutionary soil of the
first half of the nineteenth century. Marx completes the social
revolutionary doctrines of that time, of which he is, as it were, the
executor. All his thoughts and sentiments are deeply rooted in it;
they have nothing specifically Jewish about them. I know of no Jewish
philosopher, sociologist, or poet who had so little of the Jewish
character as had Marx.
II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
As in Paris, so too in Brussels, Marx frequented the society of German
working men in order to instruct them by lectures and by conversation.
He was loyally seconded by Engels, who had more time and more money
to devote to this task, and who worked for the new doctrine in Paris,
Cologne, Elberfeld and other towns. Since 1836 the German working men
living abroad had been organised in the League of the Just, which from
1840 had its head-quarters in London. The individual groups were kept
in touch with one another by means of Communist correspondence
committees. The Paris and Brussels groups drew the attention of the
London Committee to Marx, and in January, 1847, Joseph Moll, one of
its members, was commissioned to go to Brussels and obtain information
about Marx.--("Mehring's Introduction to the Reprint of the Cologne
Communist Proceedings," published by _Vorwärts_, Berlin, 1914, pp.
10-11.) The result was the transformation of the League of the Just
into the League of Communists, which held its first Congress in London
in the summer of 1847, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus) being among
those present as delegates. At the second Congress, held in London
towards the end of November and beginning of December, 1847, Marx also
appeared, and together with Engels was commissioned to prepare a new
program. The new program is the Communist Manifesto. Engels had come
from Paris, Marx from Brussels. Before leaving Paris, Engels wrote a
letter to Marx, dated November 24, in which he speaks as follows on
the subject of the Manifesto:
"Just think over the confession of faith a little. I believe it
will be best if we leave out the form of catechism and entitle
the thing 'The Communist Manifesto.' And then, as more or less
of it will consist in historical narrative, the present form is
quite unsuitable. I am bringing along the manuscript which I
have written; it is a plain narrative, but is badly put
together, and has been done in a frightful hurry. I begin, 'What
is Communism?' and then straight away with the proletariat--the
history of its origin, difference from earlier workers,
development of the antagonism of the proletariat and the middle
class, crises, conclusions, with all kinds of secondary
considerations thrown in, and lastly party politics of the
Communists, as much as is good for the public to
know."--("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. I., p. 84.)
Engels' draft of the Communist Manifesto has been edited by Eduard
Bernstein.--("Grundsätze des Kommunismus," published by _Vorwärts_,
1914.) A comparison of this draft with the actual "Communist
Manifesto" makes evident the full extent of Marx's intellectual
superiority to Engels. The Communist Manifesto contains four main
groups of ideas: (1) The history of the evolution of the middle class,
its character, its positive and negative achievement--modern
capitalism and the rise of the proletariat. (2) Theoretical
conceptions and conclusions--the doctrine of the class struggle and
the rôle of the proletariat. (3) Practical application--revolutionary
action by the Communists. (4) Criticism of other Socialist schools.
The last section has long ago lost all practical interest, so that we
need only deal with the first three sections.
(1) The middle class developed in the bosom of feudal society, in the
mediæval industrial towns. With the geographical discoveries of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its sphere of activity was
extended; it revolutionised the methods of industry, agriculture and
communication; it broke through the mediæval economic and political
bonds; it overthrew feudalism, the guilds, the little self-governing
regions, absolute monarchy, and established modern industry with its
accelerated and concentrated production, middle-class franchise, the
national State, and, at the same time, international trade. It was the
middle class which first showed what human activity can accomplish.
"It has achieved greater miracles than the construction of Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts, or Gothic cathedrals, it has carried out
greater movements than the migration of peoples or the crusades....
Although it is scarcely a century since it came to be the dominating
class, the middle class has created more powerful and more gigantic
forces of production than all past generations put together." The
subjugation of natural forces, machinery, the application of chemistry
to industry and to agriculture, steamships, railways, electric
telegraphs, the clearing of whole continents, making the rivers
navigable, the conjuring forth of whole peoples out of the ground:
that is the positive achievement of the middle class. Now for the
negative: it created the proletariat, immeasurable, uncontrollable,
anarchical economic conditions, periodical crises--poverty and famine
in consequence of over-production and a glut of wealth, over-driving
and reckless exploitation of the workers, whose labour is bought in
exchange for the minimum quantity of the necessaries of life. These
facts show that the forces of production are more extensive and more
powerful than is demanded by the conditions under which they are
operative: the economic system can produce and deliver more goods than
society can use under the existing laws concerning property, i.e., the
distribution and the effective demand fall short of the manufacture
and the supply. The material forces of production press upon the
limits imposed upon them by the laws of private property. This
happens, too, because the working class must reduce its consumption of
goods to a minimum in consequence of the existing laws of property,
which give to capital the right of distribution. All these conditions
taken together, the positive as well as the negative ones, make
possible and give rise to the struggles of the workers against the
middle class--and so the productive agents rise in rebellion. These
struggles lead to the organisation of the workers in trade unions, to
the awakening of class consciousness, and, as a result, to the
formation of the political labour party.
(2) The movements within middle-class society, as well as in feudal
and ancient society, where freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
baron and serf, guild-master and journeyman, capitalist and working
man stood and stand in constant antagonism to one another, prove that
the whole history of mankind since the rise of private ownership is
the history of class struggles, and that in these class struggles,
carried on now openly, now under the surface, either new forms of
society and of ownership, new economic systems arise or else end with
the common destruction of the two classes. The antagonistic classes
are supporters of conflicting economic interests, systems of ownership
and ideals of culture. The craftsman and tradesman of the towns, the
burgher, fought against the feudal lord and knight for individual
property, for freedom of industry and trade, for freedom to dispose of
personal property and for the national State. With the triumphal
progress of the middle class private property fell into fewer and
fewer hands. The proletarians are without property, they have no share
in the wealth of their country; on the other hand, the production of
capital becomes more and more a matter of common co-operation, and
capital becomes a joint product. The proletariat can, accordingly, no
longer fight for individual ownership but for the socially conducted
utilisation of the means of production belonging to the community and
of the goods produced. The middle class has therefore created in the
proletariat a social class which must have as its object to do away
with the middle class system of ownership and to set up the
proletarian system of common ownership.
(3) In this struggle of the working classes the Communists are
therefore the pioneers of the movement. They are at once the
philosophers and the self-sacrificing champions of the proletariat
awakened into class consciousness. "The Communists are not a special
party in contradistinction to the other Labour parties. They have no
interests apart from the interests of the whole proletariat. They set
up no special principles according to which they wish to mould the
proletarian movement." The Communists lay stress on the common
interests of the whole proletariat and of the collective movement.
Their aim is the organisation of the proletariat into a class, the
overthrow of middle-class domination, and the conquest of political
power by the proletariat. They support everywhere "any revolutionary
movement against the existing social and political conditions. In all
these movements they emphasise the question of property, in whatever
state of evolution it may appear, as the foundation of the movement.
And finally the Communists work everywhere for the union and agreement
of democratic parties[6] of all nationalities. The Communists disdain
to conceal their views and intentions. They declare openly that their
ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of every obtaining
order of society. Let the ruling classes tremble before a Communist
revolution; the workers have nothing to lose by it but their chains.
They have the world to win. Workers of every land, unite!"
From the standpoint of social philosophy, the Manifesto, a document
reflecting its time, is almost perfect. Strong emotion and
extraordinary intellectual power are united in it. Years of study of
one of the boldest and most fertile minds are here welded together in
the glowing heat of one of the most active of intellectual workshops.
But the work is not free from logical flaws. In the passages we have
quoted the part played in history by the middle class is extolled by
Marx; yet in the last few lines of the very same section he declares
that "the middle class is the unwitting and inert instrument of
industrial progress," and still more scathing is his criticism in the
second section, where the middle class is accused of indolence. "It
has been objected that, if private property were done away with, all
activity would cease and a general laziness set in. According to that,
middle-class society would have been ruined by idleness long ago; for
those of its members who work gain nothing, and those who gain do not
work." That is as much as to say that the middle class is lazy and
does not work, and yet the Manifesto says that the middle class has
achieved more marvellous works than Egypt, Rome, and the Middle Ages,
and that, in its reign of power of scarcely a hundred years, it has
created more powerful and more gigantic forces of production than all
past generations put together. How can a class which does not work
produce more marvellous works than the whole ancient and mediæval
world?
Marx frees himself later from this inconsistency by ascribing surplus
value solely to the operation of the variable part of capital
(wage-labour)--a doctrine which he develops with iron logic in his
principal work, "Capital."
III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848.
The ink had hardly dried on the Communist Manifesto when the February
Revolution broke out. The crowing of the Gallic cock soon awoke an
echo in the various German States, whilst in Brussels the democrats
were attacked and ill-treated by the mob. One of the victims of this
attack was Karl Marx, who was, moreover, banished shortly afterwards
by the Belgian Government. This action, however, did not cause him any
embarrassment, as he was ready in any case to proceed to Paris,
whither the Provisional Government of the French Republic had already
invited him in the following terms:
"Paris, March 1, 1848.
"BRAVE AND FAITHFUL MARX,
"The soil of the French Republic is a place of refuge for all
friends of freedom. Tyranny has banished you; France, the free,
opens to you her gates--to you and to all who fight for the holy
cause, the fraternal cause of every people. In this sense shall
every officer of the French Government understand his duty.
_Salut et Fraternité._
FERDINAND FLOCON,
Member of the Provisional Government."
The stay in Paris was, however, of short duration. Marx and Engels
gathered together the members of the League of Communists and procured
them the means for returning to Germany to take part in the German
revolution. They themselves travelled to the Rhineland and succeeded
in getting the establishment of the newspaper planned in Cologne into
their hands. On the first of June, 1848, the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_
appeared for the first time. It goes without saying that the editor
was Karl Marx, and among his collaborators were Engels, Freiligrath,
Wilhelm Wolff, and Georg Weerth. Occasionally, too, Lassalle sent
contributions. It is but rarely given to a daily paper to have such an
editorial staff. In the third volume of his "Collected Papers of Marx
and Engels," Franz Mehring gives a selection of the articles which
appeared in this journal. They are still worth reading. Here are a few
examples. After the fall of Vienna he wrote an article concluding with
the following words: "With the victory of the 'Red Republic' in Paris
the armies from the inmost recesses of every land will be vomited
forth upon the boundaries and over them, and the real strength of the
combatants will clearly appear. Then we shall remember June and
October, and we too shall cry, 'Woe to the vanquished!' The fruitless
butcheries which have occurred since those June and October days ...
will convince the peoples that there is only one means of shortening,
simplifying, and concentrating the torturing death agonies of
society--only one means--revolutionary terrorism."--(_Neue Rheinische
Zeitung_, November 6, 1848.)
Or take, for example, this passage from the last article of the paper,
when on May 18, 1849, it succumbed to the "craft and cunning of the
dirty West Kalmucks" (i.e., the Prussians).
"In taking leave of our readers we remind them of the words in our
first January number: 'Revolutionary upheaval of the French working
class, general war--that is the index for the year 1849. And already
in the east a revolutionary army comprised of warriors of all
nationalities stands confronting the old Europe represented by and in
league with the Russian army, already from Paris looms the Red
Republic.'"
In reading these extracts one has only to substitute Russia for France
and Moscow for Paris and we get at one of the sources of Lenin's and
Trotsky's revolutionary policy. The articles written by Marx in 1848
and 1849 have supplied the Bolsheviks their tactics.
The censorship, Press lawsuits, and the decline of the revolution
severed the life threads of the paper after scarcely a year of its
existence. Marx sacrificed everything he had in money and
valuables--in all, 7,000 thalers--in order to satisfy creditors and to
pay the contributors and printers. Then he travelled to Paris, where
he witnessed not the triumph of the Red Republic but that of the
counter-revolution. In July, 1849, he was banished by the French
Government to the boggy country of Morbihan, in Brittany; he
preferred, however, to go over to London, where he remained to the end
of his life.
IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE IN LONDON.
Marx lived for more than a generation in London. Half of this time was
spent in a wearying struggle for existence, which, however, did not
prevent him from collecting and systematising a vast amount of
material for his life-work, "Capital," nor from taking a decisive part
in the Labour movement as soon as the opportunity presented itself, as
it did on the founding of the International. The first decade was
particularly trying. A letter written on May 20, 1851, by Marx's wife
to Weydemeyer, in America, gives an affecting picture of their poverty
during these first years of exile.--("Neue Zeit," 25th year, Vol. II.,
pp. 18-21.)
The attempt to continue the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ under the title
_Neue Rheinische Revue_ had only the negative result of swallowing up
Marx's last resources. How poor Marx then was can be judged from the
fact that he had to send his last coat to the pawnshop in order that
he might buy paper for his pamphlet on the Cologne Communist trial
(towards the end of 1852). On top of all this, lamentable differences
sprang up among the German exiles, who, deceived in their
revolutionary illusions, overwhelmed one another with recriminations;
an echo of these conflicts is heard in the pamphlet "Herr Vogt"
(1860). Marx's only regular source of income in the years 1851-60 was
his earnings as correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, which paid
him at the rate of a sovereign per article, and this hardly covered
his rent and the cost of newspapers and postage. Yet his articles were
veritable essays, the fruit of researches which cost him a good deal
of time. And in the midst of this penury the idea of writing a
Socialistic criticism of political economy burnt within him. One might
almost say that since 1845 this idea had allowed him no peace.
Freiligrath's lines are, as it were, stamped upon him:
In the clouds his goal he planted;
In the dust had he to live,
Bare existence daily granted.
Cramped, hemmed in on every side,
Pinched by poverty and urged
By want, he, of all denied,
By necessity was scourged.
Only in the sixties did his fortunes improve. Small family
inheritances, Wilhelm Wolff's legacy of over £800, and Engels' more
plentiful and regular help, which from 1869 onward amounted to about
£350 annually, enabled Marx to write his "Capital," the first volume
of which, as is well known, is dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff.
To these relatively happy times belong Paul Lafargue's
reminiscences--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., pp. 10-17, 37-42)--of
his intercourse with the Marx family. In particular he depicts the
personality of the author of "Capital." In the bosom of his family and
among the circle of his friends on Sunday evenings Marx was a genial
companion, full of wit and humour. "His dark black eyes sparkled with
mirth and with a playful irony whenever he heard a witty remark or a
prompt repartee." He was a tender, indulgent father, who never
asserted the parental authority. His wife was his helper and companion
in the truest sense of the word. She was four years older than he, and
notwithstanding her aristocratic connections and in spite of the great
hardships and persecutions which for years she had to suffer by the
side of her husband, she never regretted having taken the step which
linked her destiny with that of Marx. She possessed a cheerful, bright
disposition and an unfailing tact, easily winning the esteem of every
one of her husband's acquaintances, friends, and followers. "Heinrich
Heine, the relentless satirist, feared Marx's scorn; but he cherished
the greatest admiration for the keen, sensitive mind of Marx's wife.
Marx esteemed so highly the intelligence and the critical sense of his
wife that he told me in 1866 he had submitted all his manuscripts to
her and that he set a high value upon her judgment." Six children were
born to the Marxes, four girls and two boys, of whom only three of the
girls grew up--Jenny, who married Charles Longuet; Laura, who became
the wife of Paul Lafargue; and the unhappy but highly-gifted Eleanor,
who spent 14 sad years of her life by the side of Dr. Edward Aveling.
The sixties were undoubtedly the happiest years of Marx's life, and
seemed to promise an abundant harvest in his later life. But his
health soon began to fail, and did not allow him to complete his work.
The most productive years of Marx's life were between 1837 and 1847
and between 1857 and 1871. All his valuable work falls within these
years: the "Poverty of Philosophy," the Communist Manifesto, his
activity in the International, "Capital," the Civil War in France (the
Commune).
V. THE INTERNATIONAL.
The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into
the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-class
movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign,
have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and
expression of the working-class revolutionary movements, and
especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and
adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to
obtain knowledge of the actual working-class movement and to take part
in it, he watched the activities of the English working class, which
in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist
questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change
seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The
London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform
movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was
an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested an interest in the
fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning
liberty.
At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour
leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men,
with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and
1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an
international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of
September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates
from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the
28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering
in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an
invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be
represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the
formation of the International Working Men's Association. Committees
and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles
and outline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followers and a
Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be
elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and
wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers
since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The
declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by
no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to
please English and French working men; it consists essentially of
Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to
English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to
Engels--("Correspondence," Vol. III., p. 191)--"so to arrange matters
that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to
the working-class movement with its present outlook.... It needs time
before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of
speech. One must go _fortiter in re, suaviter in modo_ (firmly
maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."
The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working class
from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from
modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt
by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the
working class; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the
ruling classes by the proletariat; international co-operation of
workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist
diplomacy.
Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to
the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In
1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next
revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and
I) have this powerful machinery _in our hands_."--("Correspondence of
Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)
The International passed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the
followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the
ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately
broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of
Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative
economic form of social organisation, only the Bakunists were also
Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to
Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one
point--that he made economics the basis of the working-class movement.
Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting
to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands.
Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national
prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The
Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and
conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late
as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume,
the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Karl Marx,
Pangermaniste" (Paris).
Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia; d. 1876, in Berne)
lived and studied in Germany during the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he
took part in the revolution, was arrested, then handed over to Russia
and banished to Siberia, whence he escaped in 1856, afterwards living
in various countries of Western Europe. He was an indifferent
theorist, and contributed little to the enrichment of philosophical
Anarchism, but he distinguished himself by his immense revolutionary
activity and his capacity for sacrifice. The influence which he
exercised sprang from his character. He had been acquainted with the
Young Hegelians as well as with Marx, Engels, and Wilhelm Wolff since
the beginning of the forties. Until the end of 1868 he acknowledged
Marx as his intellectual leader, as is evident from the following
letter which he addressed to Marx:
"123, Montbrillant, Geneva,
"December 22, 1868.
"Serno has shown me the portion of your letter which concerns
me. You ask him whether I am still your friend. Yes, more than
ever, my dear Marx, for now I understand better than ever how
truly right you are when you advance along the high road of
economic revolution and invite us to follow, and when you set
those below us who stray into the side-tracks either of national
or exclusively political enterprises. I am now doing the same
thing that you have been doing for more than twenty years. Since
my solemn public leave-taking from the bourgeois of the Berne
Congress, I no longer know any other society, any other milieu,
than the world of the workers. Henceforth my country is the
'International,' of which you are one of the most illustrious
founders. Yon see, my dear friend, that I am your disciple--and
I am proud of it. That will be enough to make clear my attitude
and my feelings toward you."--("Neue Zeit," 19th year, Vol. I.,
p. 6.)
Nevertheless, this discipleship did not hinder Bakunin from secretly
forming a separate organisation which contributed to the break-up of
the International. Moreover, the International was only a kind of
school for Socialist officers who had yet to create their armies, but
it proved even more successful than Marx himself could have expected.
The fundamental principles of Marxism ousted every other social
revolutionary system which had made itself prominent within the
working-class movement.
VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE.
On September 1, 1870, a part of the French Army was defeated near
Sedan and compelled to capitulate on the following day. Among the
prisoners was Louis Bonaparte, the French Emperor. The Empire fell on
September 4, and France was proclaimed a Republic. On September 6 Marx
wrote to Engels: "The French section of the International travelled
from London to Paris in order to do foolish things in the name of the
International. They want to overthrow the Provisional Government and
set up a _Commune de Paris_."--("Correspondence," Vol. IV., p. 330).
Although the Provisional Government of the newly-baked French Republic
was in no wise made up of friends of the democracy, Marx and Engels
expressed themselves _against_ any revolutionary action by the Paris
working class. In the second Address (or declaration) of the General
Council of the International, written on September 9, and composed by
Marx, the question is discussed as follows:
"Thus the French working class finds itself placed in extremely
difficult circumstances. Any attempt to overthrow the new
Government, when the enemy is already knocking at the gates of
Paris, would be a hopeless piece of folly. The French workers
must do their duty as citizens; but they must not let themselves
be overcome by the national reminiscences of 1792.... They have
not to repeat the past but to build the future. Let them quietly
and with determination make the most of the republican freedom
granted to them, in order to carry out thoroughly the
organisation of their own class. That will give them new,
Herculean strength for the rebirth of France and for our common
task--the emancipation of the proletariat."--("Civil War in
France," Second Address.)
Marx then urged the French workers not to do anything foolish, not to
set up a revolutionary Commune of Paris, but to make use of their
republican liberties to create proletarian organisations and to save
and discipline their forces for future tasks. Circumstances, however,
proved much stronger than any words of wisdom. Goaded by the
anti-democratic moves of the Government supporters, deeply humiliated
by the defeats of the French army, burning with patriotism and whipped
up into fury against the "capitulards," the Paris working men cast
Marx's words to the winds and rose in revolution on March 18, 1871,
proclaiming the Paris Commune. Paris was to be the capital of a
Socialist Republic. In seven weeks the Paris Revolution was
overthrown--and "Vae victis!" (Woe to the vanquished!) Marx afterwards
wrote the pamphlet on "The Civil War in France, 1871," which is one of
the most mature of his writings. He did not cut himself entirely
adrift from the revolutionaries--the Bolsheviks of that time--but
defended them with unsurpassable energy. It is the swan song of Marx
and of the first International.
VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE.
During the last twelve years of his life Marx had to fight almost
uninterruptedly against various bodily ailments, all of which had
their origin in his chronic liver complaint and over-exertion. His
work, for which he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an American friend,
"health, happiness and family," remained unfinished. He devoted his
enforced leisure to making a study of American agriculture and of
rural conditions in Russia, for which purpose he learnt Russian; he
likewise occupied himself with studies of the Stock Exchange, banking,
geology, physiology, and higher mathematics. In 1875 he wrote his
"Criticism of the Gotha Program"--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., No.
18)--which contains some very important data as to Marx's attitude to
the State, to the revolutionary period of transition from Capitalism
to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist society itself.
He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering his health. In 1877
and 1878 he was in some measure capable of carrying on his work, and
set about arranging his manuscripts and getting the second volume of
"Capital" ready for the press; it soon appeared, however, that his
capacity for work had gone. The decline in body and mind could no
longer be checked; even visits to French and Algerian watering-places
proved ineffective. It was just at this time that Marx began to find
recognition both in France and in England: Jules Guesde, Henry M.
Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxian doctrines, and
Marxian and anti-Marxian parties were formed. But the man to whom this
recognition had come was already a ruin. Bronchial catarrh,
inflammation of the lungs, spasmodic asthma, together with the loss of
his wife on December 2, 1881, and of his eldest daughter (Mme.
Longuet) in January, 1883, gave the finishing stroke to his enfeebled
body. On March 14, 1883, Marx breathed his last. Engels gives an
account of the last moments in a letter to his American friend Sorge,
dated March 15, 1883:
"Yesterday, at half-past two in the afternoon, the best time for
visiting him, I went down to see him; everybody was in tears; it
looked as if the end had come. I made inquiries, trying to get
at the truth of the matter and to offer consolation. There had
been a slight hæmorrhage, but a sudden collapse had supervened.
Our good old Lena, who had tended him better than any mother
does her child, went up, came down. He was half asleep, she
said; I could go up. As we went in, he lay there, sleeping,
never to wake again. Pulse and breathing had ceased. In those
two minutes he had gone painlessly and peacefully to sleep....
Mankind is less by a head, and indeed by the most important head
it had to-day. The working-class movement will pursue its
course, but its central point, to which French, Russians,
Americans, and Germans turned of their own accord in decisive
moments, always to receive that clear, unambiguous counsel which
genius and perfect mastery alone can give--is gone."
On Saturday, March 17, he was buried in the Highgate Cemetery, London.
Among those who spoke at the graveside were Friedrich Engels and
Wilhelm Liebknecht. The former gave a brief account of his
revolutionary struggles, in which he said:
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of the evolution of organic
nature, so Marx discovered the evolutionary law of human
history--the simple fact, hitherto hidden under ideological
overgrowths, that above all things men must eat, drink, dress,
and find shelter before they can give themselves to politics,
science, art, religion, or anything else, and that therefore the
production of the material necessaries of life and the
corresponding stage of economic evolution of a people or a
period provides the foundation upon which the national
institutions, legal systems, art, and even religious ideas of
the people in question have been built, and upon which,
therefore, their explanation must be based, a procedure the
reverse of that which has hitherto been adopted. Marx discovered
also the special law of motion for the modern capitalist mode of
production and for the middle-class society which it begets.
With the discovery of surplus value light was at once thrown
upon a subject, all the earlier investigations of which, whether
by middle-class economists or by Socialist critics, had been
gropings in the dark...."
After him spoke Liebknecht, who had hastened from Germany to pay a
last tribute to his friend and master:
"The dead one, whose loss we mourn, was great in his love and in
his hate. His hate sprang from his love. He had a great heart,
as he had a great intellect. He has raised social democracy from
a sect, from a school, to a party, which now already fights
unconquered, and in the end will win the victory."
Engels, who outlived him by twelve years, edited the two last volumes
of "Capital," while Karl Kautsky, the disciple and successor of Engels
and the real disseminator of Marxian doctrines, edited the three
volumes of Marx's historical studies on surplus value. The latter work
is not far short of being a great history of political economy.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] By democratic parties were then understood working-class political
movements, such as Chartism, etc.
IV.
THE MARXIAN SYSTEM.
I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
As a guide to his studies from 1843-4 onwards, Marx used the
conception of history, or method of investigation, which--in
contradistinction to the idealist conception of history of Hegel--was
named materialistic. As its nature is dialectic--as it seeks to
conceive in thought the evolving antagonisms of the social process--it
is, like Hegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a method of
investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marx work out his method
of investigation in a special and comprehensive form; the elements of
it are scattered throughout his writings, particularly in the
Communist Manifesto and in the "Poverty of Philosophy," and serve the
purpose of polemics or demonstration. Only in the preface to his book,
"On the Critique of Political Economy" (1859) did he devote two pages
to a sketch of his conception of history, but in phraseology which is
not always clear, sequential, or free from objection. It was the
intention of Marx to write a work on Logic, where he would certainly
have formulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As, however, his
fundamental ideas on this subject are available, we are able to
extract the essentials of his position.
A glance over human history suffices to teach us that from age to age
man has held to be true or false various opinions on rights, customs,
religion, the State, philosophy, land-holding, trade, industry, etc.,
that he has had various economic arrangements, and forms of the State
and of society, and that he has gone through an endless series of
struggles and wars and migrations. How has this complicated variety of
human thought and action come about? Marx raises that question, which,
so far as he is concerned, does not aim in the first place at the
discovery of the origin of thought, of rights, of religion, of
society, of trade, etc.; these he takes to be historically given. He
is rather concerned to find out the causes, the impulses, or the
springs which produce the changes and revolutions of the essentials
and forms of the mental and social phenomena, or which create the
tendencies thereto. In a sentence: What interested Marx here was not
the _origin_, but the development and change of things--he is
searching for the dynamic law of history.
Marx answered: The prime motive power of human society, which is
responsible for the changes of human consciousness and thought, or
which causes the various social institutions and conflicts to arise,
does not originate, in the first place, from thought, from the Idea,
from the world-reason or the world-spirit, but from the material
conditions of life. The basis of human history is therefore material.
The material conditions of life--that is, the manner in which men as
social beings, with the aid of environing nature, and of their own
in-dwelling physical and intellectual qualities, shape their material
life, provide for their sustenance, and produce, distribute and
exchange the necessary goods for the satisfaction of their needs.
Of all categories of material conditions of existence, the most
important is production of the necessary means of life. And this is
determined by the nature of the productive forces. These are of two
kinds: inanimate and personal. The inanimate productive forces are:
soil, water, climate, raw materials, tools and machines. The personal
productive forces are: the labourers, the inventors, discoverers,
engineers, and finally, the qualities of the race--the inherited
capacities of specific groups of men, which facilitate work.
The foremost place among the productive forces belongs to the manual
and mental labourers; they are the real creators of exchange-value in
capitalist society. The next place of importance is taken by modern
technology, which is an eminently revolutionising force in
society.--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., Chapters 1, 12, 13 and 14,
"Poverty of Philosophy" (German edition, 1885, pp. 100-101.))
So much for the conception "Productive Forces," which plays an
important part with Marx. We come now to the other equally important
notion, "Conditions of production." By this phrase Marx understands
the legal and State forms, ordinances and laws, as well as the
grouping of social classes and sections: thus, the social conditions
which regulate property and determine the reciprocal human relations
in which production is carried on. The conditions of production are
the work of men in society. Just as men produce various material goods
out of the materials and forces made available to them by Nature, so
they create out of the reactions of the productive forces upon the
mind definite social, political, and legal institutions, as well as
systems of religion, morals, and philosophy.
"Men make their own history, but do not so spontaneously in conditions
chosen by them, but on the contrary, in conditions which they have
found ready to hand transmitted and given."--(Marx, "The Eighteenth
Brumaire," I.)
That is to say, under the influence of productive work and its needs,
men build their form of society, their State, their religion, their
philosophy and science. The material production is the substructure or
the groundwork, while the corresponding political, religious, and
philosophical systems are the superstructure. And in such a manner
that the superstructure corresponds to the foundation, lends it
strength, and promotes its development.
The foundation is material, and the superstructure is the psychical
reflex and effect.
In broad outlines this conception may be illustrated somewhat as
follows:
Primitive human groups lived under Communism and were organised
according to blood relationship. Their deities have the
characteristics of their natural environment, and reflect the physical
effects of this environment upon the primitive mental life of the
"savage"; their religion, their morality, and their laws promote the
communal life and the tribal discipline. Feudal society is based on
the possession of land by the nobles and on the industrial labour of
the corporations of the towns. The inherited religious ideas are soon
transformed in accordance with the dominant interests of these
historical periods (primitive Christianity became a State religion);
all religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas antagonistic to these
interests were fought and persecuted. The middle-class society, which
is based on personal property, is endeavouring to sweep away all
vestiges of communal and corporation rights, to set free the
individual, to mobilise labour and property, to abolish Feudalism and
the old Church and monasterial institutions, and to put in their place
the individual relation between man and God, or the personal
conscience (the Reformation), introducing individual rights as well;
it struggles against the independent sovereignty of the feudal
domains, and labours for a united national territory, which will
afford greater scope to trade and commerce; it supports Absolutism, so
long as the latter is in conflict with the feudal lords; and when,
afterwards, Absolutism is a hindrance to the development of
middle-class society, this also is fought and a constitutional
monarchy or a republic demanded. And all this takes place not because
certain human intelligences, by reason of more intense thought, or
enlightenment, or the call of a supernatural power, are primarily at
work, but as a consequence of the influence of the material basis, of
the economic foundation of society, upon the mind, which translates
and transforms these external realities into religious, juridical, and
philosophic conceptions:
"It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence,
but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their
consciousness."--(Marx, Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
Man, even the most heroic, is not the sovereign maker and law-giver of
social life, but its executive; he only follows out the tendencies and
currents set up by the material foundation of society. Nevertheless, a
great deal depends upon the executive officials. If they possess
comprehensive knowledge, energetic natures, and outstanding
capacities, they are able, within the boundaries drawn for them, to
accomplish great things, and to accelerate the development.
"Up to the present the philosophers have but interpreted the world; it
is, however, necessary to change it."--(Marx, "Theses to Feuerbach.")
We have referred in various places to interests. We are not to
understand by this personal, but general social or class interests.
Marx is not of the opinion that everybody acts in accordance with his
personal welfare. This is not Marxian doctrine, but that of the
middle-class moral philosophers, like Helvetius (1715-1771) and Jeremy
Bentham (1748-1832), who regarded pleasure and pain of the individual
as the measure and motive of his actions and conduct. Marx is rather
of the opinion that men often, in the most important events of their
lives, act contrary to their personal interests, as in their feelings
and thoughts they identify themselves with that which they hold to be
the interests of the community or of their class. According to Marx,
individual interest generally plays a slight part in history. He is
preoccupied with the collective interest of social production. Only
the latter does he hold to be determining in the formation of the
intellectual superstructure.
Up till now we have only spoken of various forms of production and
society, and their corresponding mental systems. But we do not yet
know why and how one form of production and society becomes obsolete
and gives place to another, that is, how and why revolutionary changes
are brought about. Or in other words: we have hitherto considered the
statics of society; we will now look at its dynamics.
The revolutionary changes in society depend on two groups of
phenomena, which, although casually connected with each other, yet
work differently. One of these groups of phenomena is technical, and
consists in changes in the productive forces. The other group, which
is the effect of the first, is of a personal nature, and consists in
struggles between the social classes. Let us consider the first group
of causes.
As the productive forces expand, through greater skill on the part of
the worker, through discoveries of new raw material and markets,
through the invention of new labour processes, tools and machines, and
through the better organisation of trade and exchange, so that the
material basis or the economic foundation of society is altered, then
the old conditions of production cease to promote the interests of
production. For the conditions of production: the former social
classes, the former laws, State institutions, and intellectual systems
were adapted to a state of the productive forces which is either in
process of disappearing, or no longer exists. The social and
intellectual superstructure no longer corresponds to the economic
foundation. The productive forces and the conditions of production
come into conflict with each other.
This conflict between the new realty and the old form, this conflict
between new causes and the obsolete effects of bygone causes, begins
gradually to influence the thoughts of men. Men commence to feel that
they are confronted with a new external world, and that a new era has
been opened.
Social divisions acquire a new significance: classes and sections
which were formerly despised gain in social and economic power;
classes which were formerly honoured decline. While this
transformation of the social foundation is proceeding, the old
religious, legal, philosophical, and political systems cling to their
inherited positions, and insist on remaining, although they are
obsolete and can no longer satisfy mental needs. For human thought is
conservative: it follows external events slowly, just as our eye
perceives the sun at a point which the sun has in reality already
passed, as the rays require several minutes of time in order to strike
our optic nerves. We may recall Hegel's fine metaphor: "The Owl of
Minerva begins its flight only when twilight gathers." However late,
it does begin. Great thinkers gradually arise, who explain the new
situation, and create new ideas and trains of thought which correspond
to the new situation. The human consciousness gives birth to anxious
doubts and questionings, and then new truths; leading to differences
of opinion, disputes, strifes, schisms, class struggles, and
revolutions.
In the next chapter we will consider more closely the class struggle
between Labour and Capital. Meanwhile, we will look at the class
struggle generally.
In primitive societies, where private property is yet unknown, or
still undeveloped, there are no class distinctions, no class
domination, and no class antagonisms. The chief, the medicine man, and
the judge regulate or supervise the observance of the customary
usages, religious ceremonies, and social arrangements. But as soon as
the old order is dissolved, and private property develops, in
consequence of trade with other peoples or through wars, there arise
classes of those who possess and those who do not. The possessing
class carries on the Government, makes laws, and creates
institutions, which chiefly serve the end of protecting the interests
of the possessing and ruling classes. The intellectual structure of
the class society likewise corresponds to the interests of those who
possess and rule. So long as these interests promote the common good
in some measure, so long as the old forms of production and the old
conditions of production are largely in harmony with each other, a
certain truce prevails between the classes. But should there set in
the above-mentioned opposition between the productive forces and the
conditions of production, the latter will cease to satisfy the
oppressed classes, and class conflicts will arise, which will either
result in legal compromises (reforms) or will end in the overthrow of
the society concerned, or will lead to a new set of conditions.
Ancient history (Hebrew, Greek, Roman) is full of these social
struggles; all the great reform laws of these peoples were attempts to
establish social peace, but the rich and the poor, the Patricians and
the Plebeians, the Slaves and Freemen, continued their struggles until
the downfall of the old world, which has bequeathed to us great
intellectual treasures as the fruit of these struggles. In the Middle
Ages social struggles between the feudal lords and the traders,
between nobles and peasants, were kindled. In more recent times the
middle classes fought Autocracy and Squirearchy, and at length the
proletariat was pitted against the bourgeoisie--class struggles which
led to rebellions and revolutions, and powerfully influenced the
intellectual life.
From these historical antagonisms and struggles arose the intellectual
and political antagonisms, personified by the leaders of the social
groups and classes, of which world-history relates: opposing
religious and philosophical systems: Brahma and Buddha, Baal and
Jahveh, National God and Universal God, Heathendom and Christendom,
Catholicism and Protestantism, Materialism and Idealism, Realism and
Nominalism. However abstract or metaphysical, however remote from
actual life and material production they may appear to be,
nevertheless, in the last resort they are to be traced back through
many intermediate stages to changes in the economic foundation of the
society in question, to the contradiction between this foundation and
the conditions of production, as well as to the great struggles
between conflicting interests which spring therefrom. The ethical,
political, and politico-economic systems which strive with each other
for mastery, as well as national and world wars, are separated from
the real basis of society by a progressively smaller number of
intermediate stages: the questions of idealist or utilitarian ethics,
monarchy or republic, oligarchy or democracy, protection or free
trade, State regulation or free scope for the economic forces,
Socialism or private enterprise, etc., however lofty and humanitarian
may be the arguments and ideal motives which their champions may
adduce, are connected with the material foundation and the conditions
of production which have come into conflict with it.
Marx and Engels have set forth this conception in the Communist
Manifesto, in popular form, as follows:
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness,
changes with every change in the conditions of his material
existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
"What else does the history of ideas prove than that
intellectual production changes in character in proportion as
material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age
have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
"When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do
but express the fact that within the old society the elements of
a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old
ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions
of existence.
"When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient
religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas
succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal
society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary
bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of
conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free
competition within the domain of knowledge."
Now one step farther. When the conditions of production, the social
divisions into classes, and the laws of property become fetters to the
productive forces, when the conflict of interests condense themselves
into class struggles, then comes a period of social revolution.
"With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense
superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In
considering such transformations the distinction should always
be made between the material transformation of the economic
conditions of production which can be determined with the
precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, æsthetic, or philosophic--in short, ideological forms
in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period
of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary,
this consciousness must rather be explained from the
contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
between the social forces of production and the conditions of
production."--(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
The revolutionary period only closes when the social order that had
become full of contradictions liberates the productive forces and
strikes off their fetters, and creates new conditions of production
which correspond to them. The old society, which is doomed to
disappear, evolves the new conditions of existence before it sinks
into oblivion. The men who assist the progress of the new society
accordingly occupy themselves with problems which they are able to
solve, as the means thereto are given in the material development.
Such problems are set before them because, regarded from the
theoretical standpoint, they are the mental reflex of the
contradictions and revolutionary tendencies within society.
Accordingly, the essence of the historical development of human
society has been so far the progressive dialectical unfolding and
perfection of the productive forces.
"In broad outlines," says Marx, "we can designate the Asiatic, the
ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production,
as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of
society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last
antagonistic form of the social process of production--antagonistic
not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from
conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same
time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society
create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.
This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of
the prehistoric stage of human society."
Prehistoric stage of human society! What significant words! The
capitalist economic order is the last phase of this stage, which is
written in streams of blood and tears of the dispossessed and
exploited, and to which is given the task of developing the productive
forces and liberating men from the material fetters, so that they may
enter into a life of mental culture. The materialist conception of
history, unethical and unidealist like all natural science, opens up
wide and elevating prospects. During thousands of years man struggled
on the physical plane to obtain release from the animal kingdom, and
was subjected to the discipline of unfeeling nature. After he had
emerged from the animal kingdom, man laboured for thousands of years
to lay the foundation of human society, a process which was performed
under the hunger whip of stern taskmasters, and which powerfully
stimulated the intellectual capacities of men, but only disclosed the
ideal of justice and humanity as a remote and inaccessible star.
The materialist conception of history has shown itself to be a
fruitful method of historical investigation. Some aspects of this idea
were uttered both before and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution in
the positions of classes and the struggles which followed hard on the
English industrial revolution (1760-1825), and everywhere attended the
transition from an agrarian to an industrial State, were too palpable
to be overlooked. It was Marx who fused these ideas, with the aid of
the Hegelian dialectics made of them a method of investigation, and
pressed them into the service of Socialism and historical research.
II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES, AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS.
One of the most important contributions of Marx to the understanding
of historical processes is his conception of social classes and of
class struggles. Although, prior to Marx, there were historians and
politicians who pointed out the part played by social classes in
politics and in social convulsions, it was Marx who first grasped this
conception in its entire scope and significance, giving it precise
form, and making it an essential part of political and social thought.
He refers to the subject in the Communist Manifesto in the following
terms:
"The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those
of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence
in the early undeveloped period of the struggle between
proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see,
indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the
decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the
proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle
of a class without any historical initiative or any independent
political movement."
The classification of the various groups of society, or the division
of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a
result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of
animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group
of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is
put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot
be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.
It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether
they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain
scientifically established features which determine the social
classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts
to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics
were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in
which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief
characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the
working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the
ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material)
form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a
savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative
society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking,
or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages
of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the
chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of
the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that
the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and
zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the
working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as
sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes
possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of
livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of
capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other
class owns the means of production.
Between these two classes, says Marx, there are deep-seated,
unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a class struggle. The
antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as
the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as
possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the
owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as
possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is
indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the
intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is
only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction
is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he
does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is
therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve,
if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist
imposes. Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can
oppress the owner of labour-power.
This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the
prime cause of the class struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its
incipient stage. It develops into a class struggle when the workers
recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state,
but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the
subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that
the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means
of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers
only participate in the class struggle when they learn to think in a
Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops
out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade
Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised class, turns from
the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and
strives to change the basis of society from private property to common
property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither
freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their
emancipation can only be attained through Socialism. The class
struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts.
The dialectical movement will be incomplete if the working class does
not take its fate into its own hands, and is not convinced that it has
the power to achieve its own emancipation, and therefore contents
itself with small social reforms, or relies on noble-minded and
benevolent men and heroic redeemers. This was actually the case in the
beginnings of the Socialist movement, when the workers saw in
Socialism the only way out, but were still too weak to take their fate
into their own hands. This was the period which Marx called Utopian,
when outstanding personalities spread Socialist ideas, and made
Socialist plans and experiments to free the labouring masses. As these
personalities knew the impotence of the masses, they turned to
philanthropists and humane rulers, and sought to convince them that
reason, justice, and the general welfare demanded that Socialism
should be introduced, and poverty, misery, and their consequences
abolished. This period of Utopian Socialism gave way before the
further development of industry, the progress of machine technique,
the centralisation and concentration of the means of production and
exchange, which brought with it an increase in the number, strength,
organisation, and class-consciousness of the working classes. It is
the centralisation of the means of production and exchange, in
particular, which renders it possible for the working class, by
paralysing industry and power stations, to cause the whole of society
to feel that living labour-power forms the soul of the economic life.
At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the
reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that
the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of
Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in
harmony with the course of social development.
In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded
upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class,
of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle with the
capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of
social revolution.
The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and
hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over
the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and
economic system--one of which classes fights for the existing order of
private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system.
Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles.
The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of
the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to
maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest
of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.
The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour
movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of
Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political
thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of
political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great
personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now,
political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class
and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations.
These new political and historical orientations are largely the result
of Marx's life-work.
Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the
class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the
Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and
Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle
constitutes the lever of social revolution and the impulse of the
dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is
justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the
capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the
transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from
the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible,
or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The
Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic
reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that
in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy.
This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.
III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP.
The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union
movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed
towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will
function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted
task, as its foundation--the Trade Union movement--becomes established
and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The
Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the
present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the
proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation
process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most
effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of
political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry
out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To
this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition
period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.--(Marx, Letter to the German Social
Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)
Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852,
to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:
"As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the
existence of classes in modern society or their strife against
one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the
evolution of the class struggles, and political economists
showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a
new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the
existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material
production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is
but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the
creation of a society of free and equal."--("Neue Zeit," Vol.
XXV., second part, p. 164.)
With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his
doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in
1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship
in the Communist Manifesto:
"The first step in the revolution by the working class is to
raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
the battle of democracy.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of
the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase
the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the
conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable,
but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves,
necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of
production."
But suppose that it is not the revolutionary working class which first
attains to power in the revolution, but the democracy of the lower
middle class and the social reformists. In this case, Marx gives the
following advice: "Separate from it, and fight it." In the address to
the League of Communists in 1850 he said:
"It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that
are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage,
resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief
factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this
struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an
attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as
possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to
arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remain
quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude
the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the
power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from
doing this, but it is within their power to render their success
over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them
such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the
middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later
substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably
facilitated.
"The workers must, during the conflict and immediately
afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of
the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their
present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the
subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the
victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as
long as possible.
"Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of
hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful
remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular
rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their
direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and
after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to
present their own demands side by side with those of the
middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as
soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the
government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be
exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every
possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to
compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a
cool and dispassionate fashion, and manifest open distrust of
the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the
ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows
every successful street fight. Against the new official
Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers'
government, either in the form of local committees, communal
councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the
democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses
its support amongst the working classes, but from the
commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a
jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working
class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers
must no longer level their distrust against the defeated
reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies,
who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends.
The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to
threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to
the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The
arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must
be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving
of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers.
But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to
organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own
chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State
power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are
employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a
special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part
of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up
their arms and equipment, and any attempt at disarmament must
be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the
middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent
and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the
most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule
of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time
unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power
in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged
to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will
be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the
workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers
cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1)
compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many
sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise
themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as
possible of the productive forces, means of transport,
factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose
measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the
workers must press them to the point of turning such measures
into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if
the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and
factories the workers must demand that such railways and
factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be
simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the
Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a
progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a
moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so
steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if
the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the
workers must demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the
workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and
measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either
work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they
cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to
paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to
the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set
themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and
indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as
possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by
democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes,
self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the
revolution in permanence.'"
This Address of Marx, written in 1850, appears to be the guide of the
Bolsheviks and Spartacists.
The working classes may, however, not expect their immediate
emancipation from their political victory.
"In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that
higher form of life which present-day society inevitably
opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole
series of historical processes, in the course of which men and
circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to
realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new
society, which have already developed in the womb of the
collapsing bourgeois society."--(Marx, "Civil War in France.")
The means of production will gradually be socialised, production will
be placed on a co-operative basis, education will be combined with
productive work, in order to transform the members of society into
producers. So long as the transition period lasts the Communist
maxim, "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his
needs," cannot become operative. For this period is in every
respect--economic, social, and intellectual--still tainted with the
marks of the old society, and "rights cannot transcend the economic
structure of society, and the cultural development which it
determines."--(Criticism of Gotha Program.) To each will be given
according to his deeds.
"Accordingly the individual producer will receive back what he gives
to society, after deductions for government, education, and other
social charges. He will give society his individual quota of labour.
For example: the social working day consists in the sum total of
individual working days; the individual labour time of the individual
producer is the part of the social working day which he contributes;
his share thereof. He will receive from society a certificate that he
has performed so much work (after deducting his work for social
funds), and with this certificate he will draw from the social
provision of articles of consumption as much as a similar quantity of
labour costs. The same quantity of labour as he will give to society
in one form he will receive back in another.... The right of producers
will be proportionate to the work they will perform: the equality will
consist in the application of the same measure: labour."
Because performances will vary in accordance with unequal gifts and
degrees of diligence, an unequal distribution will actually take place
during the transition period. Only in a fully developed Communistic
society, after the distinction between intellectual and physical
labour has disappeared, when productive activity has become a first
need of life, when the all-round development of the individual and
the productive forces has been achieved, and all the springs of
co-operative riches flow abundantly; only then can the narrow
middle-class idea of rights be improved on, and the Communist
principle of equality be put into operation.
Marx, who reasoned on strictly economic lines, and placed the
emancipation of the working class as the highest goal, to which all
other political and economic movements are subordinated, did not
mistake the economic, political, and historical rôle of the nation:
this is shown by the Communist Manifesto, where the creation of the
national State by the bourgeoisie is indicated. He mocked at the young
enthusiasts who thought they could brush aside the nation as an
obsolete prejudice, but, in spite of this, he considerably
under-estimated the unifying force of national feeling, considered
from a biological and cultural point of view. He divided civilised
mankind into antagonistic classes, and assumed that the economic
dividing lines would prove to be more effective than national and
political boundary lines. He was, therefore, through and through
international. Marx demanded that the national Labour Parties should
act internationally as soon as there was a possibility of the collapse
of the capitalist domination. He reproached the original Gotha program
with the fact that "it borrowed from middle-class Leagues of Peace and
Freedom the phrase of the international brotherhood of peoples,
whereas it was necessary to promote the international combination of
the working classes in a common struggle against the ruling classes
and their Governments." Marx had no confidence in the pacifism of the
bourgeoisie.
IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES.
1. _Capital._
As we already know, Marx became a Socialist in the year 1843. As a
believer in dialectics, he knew that Socialism can only be understood
by a knowledge of the movement operating in middle-class society and
its developing forces. His investigations in 1843-4 led to the result
that political economy forms the basis of bourgeois society.
Henceforth political economy became the chief department of his
studies. His comprehensive studies of French and English economists,
especially Sismondi and Ricardo, and the anti-capitalist literature of
England of the years 1820-40, which were connected with the Ricardian
theory of value, furnished him with a wealth of suggestions and
materials for the criticism of political economy, for the source and
origin and development and decline of capitalism, written from the
standpoint of the working class and the coming Socialistic society.
Such a work is "Capital." It consists of three volumes. Only the first
volume (1867) was carried through the press by Marx himself. The other
two volumes he only sketched, and they were completed and published by
Engels after Marx's death.
The first volume deals with the origin and tendencies of large
industrial capital, with the immediate and simple process of commodity
production, so far as it concerns the relations between employer and
worker, the exploitation of the proletariat, wages and labour time,
and the influence of modern technique on the condition of the worker.
We see in the first volume the effect of the factory system in
creating capital. Its chief figure is the producing, suffering,
rebellious working class. In the second volume, the employer appears
on the market, sells his commodities, and sets the wheels of
production again in motion, so that commodities will continue to be
produced. In the third volume, the realisation process of the
undertakings of the capitalist class, or the movement of capital as a
whole is exhibited: cost of production, cost price, total gains and
their division into profit, interest and ground rent. The first volume
presents the greatest difficulties. The tremendous efforts of the
author to produce a masterpiece unnecessarily refined and sublimated
and overloaded with learning the doctrines of value and surplus value
until they attained the level of a philosophy, an example of Hegelian
logic. He played with his subject like an intellectual athlete. That
Marx could handle complicated economic questions in a clear, vigorous
manner is shown by the third volume, which is written just as it came
out of the author's head, and without the apparatus of learning
subsequently erected, without the crutches of notes and
polemico-philosophical excursions.
To understand "Capital" it is necessary to bear in mind that (1) Marx
regarded the scientifically discovered principles as the real inner
being of things, practice he regarded as the superficial appearance of
things, capable of being apprehended empirically; for example, Value
is the theoretical expression, Price the empirical; Surplus Value is
the theoretical, and Profit the empirical expression; the appearances
apprehended by experience (Price and Profit) deviate indeed from
theory, but without the theory they cannot be understood; (2) he
looked at the capitalist economic system as being essentially free
from external hindrances and disturbances, free from invasions both
by the State and the proletariat: the Labour struggles of factory
protection laws of which Marx speaks in "Capital" serve rather to
perfect the productive forces than to restrict the exploiting
proclivities of sovereign capital.
2. _Value._
The life and motion of capitalistic society appears as an infinite net
of exchange operations, formed out of numerous entwined meshes.
Through the medium of money, men continually exchange the most varied
commodities and services. A ceaseless buying and selling, an
uninterrupted series of exchanges of things, and labour power--this
constitutes the essential part of human relations in capitalistic
society. An economic map of these relations, graphically displayed,
would not be less confusing than an astronomical map which exhibited
the manifold and intersected orbits of the heavenly bodies. And yet
there must be some rule or law which operates in this seeming medley
of movements; for men do not work or exchange their goods by hazard,
like savages who give their entire lumps of gold or rough diamonds for
a necklace of glass pearls. The English and French economists in the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, amongst whom Petty
(1623-87), Quesnay (1694-1759), Adam Smith (1723-96), and Ricardo
(1772-1823) were the most original, sought for the laws which
regulated exchange operations, and their theories were designated by
Marx as classical bourgeois economy. Following up their
investigations, Marx declared: Every commodity, that is, every thing
or good produced under Capitalism and brought to the market possesses
a use value and an exchange value.
The use value is the utility of the commodity to satisfy a physical or
mental need of its user: a commodity without use value is not
exchangeable or saleable. As use values, commodities are materially
different from each other; nobody will exchange a ton of wheat for a
ton of wheat of the same kind, but he will for clothes.
In what measure will commodities exchange with one another? The
measure is the exchange value, and this consists in the trouble and
quantity of labour which the production of a commodity costs. Equal
quantities of labour are exchanged with each other on the market. As
exchange values, as the embodiment of human labour, commodities are
essentially equal to each other, only quantitatively are they
different, as different categories of commodities embody different
quantities of labour. It is obvious that the quantities of labour will
not be calculated according to the working methods of the individual
producers, but according to the prevailing social working methods.
If, for example, hand-weaver A requires twenty hours for the
production of a piece of cloth, which in a modern factory will be
produced in five hours, the cloth of the hand-weaver does not
therefore possess four-fold exchange value. If hand-weaver A demands
of consumer B an equivalent of twenty working hours, B answers that a
similar piece of cloth can be produced in five hours, and therefore it
only represents an exchange value of five working hours. Thus,
according to Marx, the exchange value of a commodity consists in the
quantity of socially necessary labour power which its reproduction
would require.
This quantity of labour is no constant factor. New inventions,
improvements in labour processes, increase in the productivity of
labour, etc., cause a diminution in the quantity of labour necessary
for the reproduction of a commodity; its exchange value, or expressed
in terms of money, its price, will therefore sink, provided that other
things (demand, medium of exchange) remain equal.
Consequently, labour is the source of exchange value, and the latter
is the principle which regulates exchange operations. Exchange value
even measures the extent of the commodity wealth of society. Wealth
may increase in volume, but decrease in value, in so far as a less
quantity of socially necessary labour becomes necessary for its
reproduction.
The more progressive a country is industrially and the higher the
level of its civilisation, the greater is its wealth, and the smaller
is the quantity of labour which must be expended on the creation of
wealth. In the practical Labour politics of our times, this is
expressed in higher wages and shorter working hours.
It was said above that use value is a basic condition for the exchange
of the individual commodity. This does not exhaust the rôle of use
value. The quantity of use value of which society has need determines
the quantity of the exchange values to be created. If more commodities
are required than society requires, the superfluous commodities have
no exchange value, in spite of the labour that is expended on
them.--("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 1, pp. 175-176.)
The complete realisation of exchange values or the social labour that
is performed depends, as is seen, on the adaptation of supply to
demand, and is a matter of organisation, of social direction.
We have noticed that the Marxian theory of value is related to that of
the classical economists, but they are by no means the same thing.
Apart from some improvements and definitions which Marx made, they are
distinguished by the following conceptions: In the classical theory of
value, the capitalist who directs production and provides with his
capital the tools and raw materials of labour, markets the finished
commodity, and keeps going the processes of reproduction, appears as
the only creator of value: the wage worker is only one of his means of
production. In the Marxian theory of value, on the other hand, the
wage worker who transforms the raw materials into commodities, or
removes the raw materials to the place of production, appears as the
sole creator of value. Value is only created by the worker in
production, and in distribution connected therewith.
3. _Wages and Labour._
The worker appears to receive wages for his work. In reality he
receives wages as the equivalent for the labour power expended by him,
quite in accordance with the law of value, inasmuch as he receives by
way of exchange as much means of sustenance as is usual and customary
to replace the labour power he has expended, just as the working horse
receives as much oats and hay as are necessary to maintain it capable
of work.
The capitalist and the worker exchange certain quantities of
commodities in proportions determined by economic laws (means of
subsistence against a quantity of the commodity, labour power, of
equal value, commodity for commodity, exchange value for exchange
value).
As, therefore, the wages of labour signify a certain quantity of the
means of subsistence, so they increase even if their money form
remains unaltered with a fall in the price of the means of life, for
the worker is then in the position, with his unaltered wage, to buy a
greater quantity of the means of life. In the reverse case, if the
prices of the means of life rise, the wages of labour fall, even if
their money form remains the same as previously. This law of wages,
formulated by Ricardo, was accepted by Marx, but he did not content
himself with this acceptance. Ricardo regarded the capitalist world as
the only possible and reasonable one, at least at the time when he
wrote his "Principles," while Marx from the year 1843 adopted a
critical attitude towards it, and sought to negate it. Consequently,
he investigated further, and expressed himself somewhat as follows:
The capitalist theoricians believed that the wages question was
disposed of when it was settled by the law of value. We know, however,
that every commodity possesses not only an exchange value, but also a
use value, and is bought for the sake of the latter. The use value of
the commodity labour power is distinguished in a very remarkable way
from the use value of all other commodities.
The use or the employment of labour power creates exchange value, and
can create much more exchange value than itself possesses.
The employer can make use of labour power so long that it not only
creates its own exchange value (the value of the means of
subsistence), but double this. To create the value of wages, the
worker needs five or six hours daily, but he is obliged to produce for
the capitalist during ten or twelve hours. If the worker were
independent he would only produce during one half of the working day
in order to receive his means of subsistence. This period of producing
Marx called "necessary labour." As he is dependent on the capitalist,
the worker must not only perform "necessary labour" but also surplus
labour: the worker can generally only find employment under the
conditions that, besides the time needed for himself, he also works a
definite number of hours for the capitalist without payment. Or, as
Marx says: "The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the
labourer alive during the 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him
from working the whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and
the value which labour creates in the labour process are two entirely
different magnitudes. And this difference in the two values was what
the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labour power. The
circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power
costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same
labour power can work during a whole day; that consequently the value
which its use during one day creates is double what he pays for that
use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the
buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller."
"No injury to the seller," which is quite correct from the standpoint
of Ricardo, but not from that of Marx. He often calls surplus value
"unpaid labour," and says, for example, "the capitalist appropriates
one half of every day's labour without payment." In other words, he
takes away something without return. This is a very distinct ethical
judgment.
On the other hand, it is very important that in our consideration of
the wages question we have come up against the Marxian doctrine of
surplus value. For this doctrine is the cornerstone of the whole
economic system of Marx.
4. _Surplus Value._
We have already noted that Marx followed the classical economics in
his treatment of the theory of value, but improved the definition of
it, and brought it to bear on wages. In doing this he laid stress on
the conflict between Capital and Labour.
The beginning of this dialectical process, so far as England was
concerned, was the work of the anti-capitalistic critics, who uttered
their protest about 1820, or three years after the appearance of
Ricardo's work. They declared, according to Ricardo, labour is the
source and the measure of value. And yet according to his opinion
labour is nothing and capital everything.
This should be reversed: labour must be all, and capital nothing. This
literature was contemporaneous with the emergence of the English
revolutionary Labour movement, from which Chartism arose at a later
date. Piercy Ravenstone (1821) called capital a metaphysical (airy,
impalpable) entity. Hodgskin (1827) called it a fetish, whereas they
described labour as the economic reality. The expressions
surplus-product and surplus-value were already known to this
anti-capitalist school, with which Marx also connected himself when he
set to work to elaborate his criticism of political economy.[7] But
this literature supplied him with much less material for the
construction of the theory of surplus value than the formulation of
the theory of value of the classical economy. Besides, while the
English anti-capitalist critics, like Ravenstone, Gray, Hodgskin, and
J.F. Bray merely condemned surplus value as immoral and as the source
of all social wrongs, Marx used the theory of surplus value as the key
to unlock the mechanism of the capitalist system and to reveal its
workings, its tendencies, and its final destiny. This appears to be
the real difference between the English anti-capitalist critics and
Marx. In this matter he was obliged to perform most of the work
himself. The question he put was no longer "What is the substance of
wealth and how is it measured?" but "How is its growth and continual
accretions to be explained?" Capital is that portion of wealth which
is employed for the purpose of gain, of increase. Whence comes this
gain, this increase? The answer is as follows:
All capital that is embarked on a productive undertaking consists of
two parts: one part is expended on the technical means of
production--on buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials, the
other on wages. The first part Marx calls Constant Capital (c), the
other part Variable Capital (v). The first is called constant, because
it only adds to the commodities just as much value as it loses in the
course of the productive process; it creates no fresh value: Marx also
calls it the passive portion. The outlay on wages is called variable
capital because it undergoes an alteration in the process of
production: it creates new additional value: Marx also called variable
capital the active portion, for it creates surplus value (s).
This composition of capital of constant and variable parts Marx calls
its organic composition. He calls it average or normal composition
when the capital of a business is 80 per cent. constant and 20 per
cent. variable. If the constant part is higher, and the variable part
lower, he calls it capital of a high composition.
Capital of under 80 per cent. constant portion and over 20 per cent.
variable portion he calls capital of a lower composition. And rightly,
because the higher the ladder of capitalist production is, the more
costly and extensive are the machinery and factory buildings and the
greater is the outlay on raw materials, whereas primitive businesses
employ less machinery, cheaper workshops, but a relatively greater
number of workers. The relation between (c) and (v) reveals at the
same time the stage to which production has developed.
Thus, according to Marx, it is solely the variable capital which
creates surplus value, or, as it is commonly expressed, profit. We
have seen above, in the explanation of the nature of wages, why
variable capital creates more value than it is paid for by the
capitalist; the worker does indeed receive the exchange value of his
labour power, but the use value of the labour power functions, we have
assumed, twice as many hours as are necessary for its reproduction.
This surplus labour is embodied in surplus value. While the worker
receives, let us say, a daily wage of three shillings, for the
reproduction of which five hours of work suffice, his labour power
will be used for ten hours. These five hours of surplus labour appear
in the exchange value of the commodity, so that the value of the
commodity is composed of the transferred portion of the constant
capital, the outlay on wages, and the added surplus value. Immediately
before the production process only constant and variable capital
existed, or, in brief (c) and (v); after the completion of the
production process, the commodity embodies constant and variable
capital and also surplus value, or (c) and (v) and (s). This is the
actual value of the commodity, (c) or, shortly expressed, c + v + s.
The relation between wages and surplus value, or between paid and
unpaid labour, or, shortly, s/v, Marx calls the rate of surplus value:
it expresses the degree of the exploitation of labour.
If wages amount to three shillings, which can be produced in five
working hours, and if the worker works in the factory ten hours for
these wages, so that he creates exchange value to the amount of six
shillings, then the rate of surplus value is 100 per cent. The whole
of the surplus value which arises in this manner in the process of
production is called the mass of the surplus value, or shortly, m.s.,
that is to say, the individual rate of surplus value multiplied by the
total number of workers engaged in an undertaking, or the total amount
of wages.
5. _Profit._
The mass of surplus value appears to the capitalist in the shape of
profit. Surplus value is a Marxian scientific term which exactly
expresses the principle of profit. Profit is a commercial expression
which describes surplus value as it appears in practical life as a
subject of experience, i.e., empirically.
The distinction between the Marxian theoretical and the commercial
empirical conception is, however, not so simple: it arises from the
different conceptions of the influence of capital and labour in the
economic process. Let us explain it more distinctly.
As is known, Marx divided the capital embarked in industrial
enterprise into two parts: into constant (technical means of
production) and variable (living labour power, wages). He assumed that
only the living labour power (wage labour) creates surplus value,
whilst the constant capital only adds its own value to the new
products.
The capitalist divides his capital outlay otherwise: into fixed
(buildings and machines) and circulating (raw materials and wages)
capital. The fixed capital is only used up slowly and only passes
entirely into production during a series of years--let us say 15
years: thus of a fixed capital of £75,000, £5,000 would each year be
consumed in the production of commodities, and written off in the
balance sheet. On the other hand, the circulating capital (raw
materials and wages) are wholly consumed in every period of
production, and must be renewed at the beginning of a new period of
production.
Suppose an industrial undertaking about to be started requires a
capital expenditure of £105,000: £75,000 fixed capital (for buildings
and machinery), £20,000 for raw materials, £10,000 for wages. For
convenience sake, we will suppose that the period of production lasts
a year, and that the rate of surplus value amounts to 100 per cent.,
that is, the labour power receives a payment of £10,000, and produces
a value of £20,000. At the end of the year, the capitalist reckons an
expenditure of £5,000 on account of fixed capital, and £30,000 of
circulating capital: the commodities produced cost, therefore, a net
outlay of £35,000. This is the cost price, without adding profit.
According to Marx, cost price signifies (c) and (v), therefore without
(s), (surplus value).
But the capitalist knows that the manufactured commodities represent a
greater value than the cost price. According to Marx, the surplus
value amounts to £10,000 (as the variable capital of £10,000 creates
surplus value at the rate of 100 per cent.); but the capitalist adds
to the cost price a profit which includes the gains of the enterprise
and interest on the capital outlay. If the capitalist were alone in
the market, his profit might suck up the whole of the surplus value of
£10,000; but he has to reckon with competition and the state of the
market. The cost price, plus profit, is the production price as
established by the capitalist. But according to Marx, that is, in pure
theory, the production price is equal to the cost price, plus surplus
value. There is thus a quantitative distinction--a difference in the
amount of money--between the theoretical and practical production
price, as well as a qualitative distinction between the notions of the
capitalist and Marx respecting the source of profit. The capitalist
believes that profit is the result of the portion of capital which he
has put into the process of production, combined with his own
commercial ability. On the other hand, Marx asserts that the
capitalist can only extract a profit because the wage workers (the
living labour power) create a surplus value in the process of
production for which they receive no payment.
We assumed that the surplus value amounted to 100 per cent. measured
with variable capital, and that £10,000 expended on wages produced
£20,000. The annual balance sheet, however, would show the percentage
of profit to the total outlay. Consequently, we must spread the
£10,000 surplus value over the £35,000 which have been expended. The
surplus value of an undertaking spread over the total capital (c)
Marx calls the rate of profit, or shortly, s/c = 10000/35000 = 28.58
per cent.
As a rule, the capitalist cannot sell under cost price without
becoming bankrupt, but he can quite easily sell under the production
price, and mostly does so. In the example already given, his rate of
profit amounts to over 28 per cent. According to the degree of
competition, or by reason of other circumstances which we will examine
in the next chapter, he can content himself with a rate of profit of
10, 15, or 20 per cent., which will serve him partly as an income and
partly be expended in the development of his enterprise. The 28 per
cent. profit generally forms a circle within which he fixes his
manufactured price. Under favourable circumstances he can add the
whole 28 per cent, to the price; under less favourable, only 20, 15,
or 10 per cent. Accordingly, several portions of surplus value remain
in the commodities which are not yet realised. What happens to them?
The remaining portions of profit or of surplus value fall to the large
or small traders who are interposed between producer and consumer, or
go in the form of interest to the banking institutions, in the event
of the capitalist operating with borrowed money. As the profit is only
realised in the process of circulation (in commerce and exchange) and
there divided amongst the various economic classes and sections, most
people believe that profit arises in commercial transactions. They do
not know that the price of a commodity can only be increased in trade
because its manufactured price was fixed below its price of production
or its value, that is, because the commodities contain surplus value
which is only gradually realised in the process of circulation.
The social significance of this doctrine is far-reaching. If it is
correct, then all the social sections which are not engaged as manual
and brain workers in the process of production, or in the transport of
raw material, lead a parasitical life and consume the surplus value
which is squeezed by the capitalist class out of the proletariat and
appropriated without payment.
Quite otherwise are capitalist ideas. According to them, profit is the
result both of the spirit of the enterprise and the ability of the
capitalist, added to that portion of the capital which is put into the
process of production: the machines and buildings and raw materials
which are used up, and the labour power, all of which are bought at
their proper exchange value. It is only fit and proper that the trader
and moneylender should receive a portion of the profit so created, for
they assist in realising the exchange value by bringing the
commodities to the consumer, and thus rendering possible the process
of production.
Surplus value or profit? Labour or Capital? Behind this question lurks
the great class struggle of the modern social order. No wonder the
Marxian doctrine of value and surplus value was the occasion for an
extensive controversy, in which the famous problem of the average rate
of profit played a great part.
6. _The Average Rate of Profit._
According to Marx's doctrine of value and surplus value only variable
capital creates fresh value and surplus value. An industrial
undertaking of a lower organic composition, which thus employs much
variable capital and little constant capital, must consequently
create a greater surplus value or more profit than an industrial
undertaking of higher composition which may employ the same total
capital, but composed of greater constant and smaller variable
portions than the former. Let us take two industrial capitals of
£35,000 each. One expends £15,000 on the constant elements (machinery,
raw materials) and £20,000 on the variable element (wages of labour).
The other shows £20,000 constant part and £15,000 variable part. With
an equal rate of surplus value--100 per cent.--the first capital would
produce £20,000 surplus value (profit) and the other only £15,000
profit. Experience shows, however, that equal amounts of capital--in
spite of temporary differences in profits--tend to produce equal
profits. From this, it would appear that it is actually the capital
expended and not the labour employed which determines the magnitude of
the surplus value (profit), that the concrete results of the
capitalist process of production do not confirm the Marxian theory of
value, that the facts directly contradict the theory. It was Marx
himself who drew attention to this problem. After he had constructed
his theory of surplus value in the form of a scientific law, he
continued: "This law clearly contradicts all experience based on
appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the
percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant
capital and little variable capital, does not, on account of this,
pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets
in motion much variable and little constant capital."
How, then, can the equal rate of profit in the case of capitals of
different organic composition be harmonised with the theory of surplus
value?
Marx concedes that equal capital sums whose organic parts are
unequally employed give an equal rate of profit, although the volumes
of surplus value created are different. Two capital sums of £50,000
each, one of which, for example, represents £40,000 constant and
£10,000 variable capital, and with a rate of surplus value of 100 per
cent. gives £10,000 surplus value, while the other is composed of
£10,000 constant and £40,000 variable capital, and with an equal rate
of surplus value gives an amount of £40,000 surplus value, will
nevertheless yield an equal rate of profit, although theoretically
they would be unequal if the rate of surplus value directly determined
the rate of profit. In the first case, the rate of profit would amount
to 20 per cent. and in the second to 80 per cent. In reality both
undertakings yield an equal rate of profit.
How is this explained, according to Marx? By means of competition, the
different rates of profit are levelled to a general rate of profit,
which is the average of all the various rates of profit. Thus the
capitalists do not realise the surplus value as it is created in any
particular factory, but in the form of average rate of profit as it is
produced by the operations of the total capital of society. The
average rate of profit may be lower or higher than the individual rate
of profit, for the "various capitalists," as Marx explains, "so far as
profits are concerned, are so many stockholders in a stock company in
which the shares of profits are uniformly divided for every 100 shares
of capital, so that profits differ in the case of the individual
capitalists only according to the amount of capital invested by each
of them in the social enterprise, according to his investment in
social production as a whole, according to his shares."
While thus the individual rates of profit do not proportionately
coincide with the rates of surplus value, i.e., while the degree of
exploitation of the worker in the individual factory, and the volume
of surplus value thus individually created, do not directly determine
the individual rate of profit, it is the total mass of social surplus
value which is the source of the average rate of profit. If the mass
of the surplus value be large, the average rate of profit will also be
great. Marx says: "It is here just the same as with average rate of
interest which a usurer makes who lends out various portions of his
capital at different rates of interest. The level of his average rate
depends entirely on how much of his capital he has lent at each of the
different rates of interest." The higher the various individual rates
of interest, the higher will be the average rate of interest at which
his capital has been put out.
The individual price of production signifies, therefore, cost price
plus the average rate of profit, and not plus surplus value: it does
not necessarily correspond with the total amount of the constant and
variable portions of capital employed in an individual enterprise,
plus the mass of the surplus value: the prices and magnitudes of value
of commodities are not manifestly equal, as Marx has often pointed
out. Of course, the total profits of the capitalist class coincide
with the total surplus value extracted from the working class,
provided, of course, that the supply of commodities corresponds with
the social needs.
Thus the law of surplus value, in spite of all deviations and
refractions, holds good in the last resort. "In theory," observes
Marx, "it is assumed that the laws of the capitalist mode of
production develop freely. In reality, there is always only an
approximation."
And the more capitalist production develops, the greater will be the
degree of approximation in particular cases, for the progress of
Capitalism signifies a continuous increase of constant capital, a more
mechanical character being given to industrial processes, and a
reduction of variable capital to the necessary minimum, so that the
differences in the organic composition of capitalist undertakings
become less, thus bringing the average rate of profit and the rate of
surplus value nearer to each other.
This indirect and difficult method of realising profits involves the
fact that the capitalist does not distinctly observe the exploitation
of wage labour practised by him, but he believes that the profit is
owing to his own commercial ability.
This difficult section of the outlines of the economic doctrines of
Marx can be most fitly concluded by quoting the comprehensive
observations of Marx himself upon this subject, which he gives at the
end of his book.--("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 2, pp. 355-6.)
"In a capitalist society, this surplus value or this surplus product
(leaving aside accidental fluctuations in its distribution and
considering only the regulating law of these fluctuations) is divided
among the capitalists as a dividend in proportion to the percentage of
the total social capital held by each. In this shape the surplus value
appears as the average profit, which in its turn is separated into
profits of enterprise and interest, and which in this way may fall
into the hands of different kinds of capitalists. Just as the active
capitalist squeezes surplus labour, and with it surplus value in the
form of profit out of the worker, so the landlord in his turn squeezes
a portion of this surplus value from the capitalist in the shape of
rent. Hence when speaking of profit as that portion of surplus value
which falls to the share of capital, we mean average profit....
Profits of capital (profits of enterprise plus interest) and ground
rent are merely particular constituents of surplus value.... If added
together, these parts form the sum of the social surplus value. A
large part of profits is immediately transformed into capital." In
this way, capital grows, or, as Marx says, accumulates.
7. _Surplus Value as Social Driving Force._
It has been said already that capital is that portion of wealth which
is devoted to the object of increasing wealth, of gain, the extraction
of profit or surplus value. This object dominates the capitalist
class; the desire for surplus value is the leading impulse and
principle motive of their activity. Goaded by this desire and
exclusively occupied with their special interests, this class
unconsciously and unintentionally develops the entire capitalist
system and leads it to ever higher and more comprehensive stages.
Surplus value is thus the driving force of the history of modern
capitalist society. This principle is rigidly followed out by Marx in
his theoretical system, which aims at showing the rise and growth of
Capitalism.
The capitalist is no scientific investigator: he is not clear himself
whether profit is created by a portion of the capital, or is the
result of personal productive forces, but he knows one thing--without
living labour power, without the wage worker, his whole capital
remains dead and does not increase; all the fixed capital and raw
materials are of no use to him so long as they are not set in motion
by living labour power and transformed into commodities. His efforts
are, therefore, primarily directed to making proper use of the living
labour power. Historically considered, little constant and relatively
much variable capital was employed in the primitive stage of the large
scale industry: there was as yet little machinery, and the chief thing
was the living labour power. The workers were not yet factory
proletarians in the modern sense, but artisans who had lost their
independent existence.
The capitalist harnessed them and utilised their labour power and
special ability. Consequently, he strives to lengthen the working day,
in order that as many commodities and as much profit as possible may
be produced.
If previously the wage worker had laboured ten hours, of which five
were devoted to the production of the value of his wages and five to
surplus value, he is now obliged to work for twelve hours, which
increases the period for surplus labour to seven hours. The surplus
value which is extracted through the lengthening of the working day is
called by Marx "absolute surplus value."
Meanwhile, the capitalist learns by experience that if the workers are
so organised as to co-operate with one another, the productivity of
labour increases. From this arises the mode of labour which Marx calls
Co-operation, or a reorganisation of the workplace, which raises the
entire production of commodities to a higher level. The co-operation
of the workers in the process of production soon leads to the
discovery that, if the worker does not himself create the whole
product, but only a part thereof, he loses less time and becomes
quicker and more skilful in his work and produces more than
previously. This discovery leads to the "division of labour," which
indeed reduces the worker to the position of an automaton, or a living
machine, but considerably augments commodity wealth. Division of
labour again demands finer tools; mechanical problems arise to be
solved by mechanicians and engineers. This favours the progress of
mechanics. The growing commodity wealth, and the pressure to realise
it profitably, renders necessary more extensive markets; the need for
extension comes up against transport difficulties; transport problems
arise, to be solved by road and canal engineers. The increasing
variety of the labour process and the categories of commodities which
are produced results in new metallurgical, physical, and chemical
problems. Natural science flourishes.
Meanwhile, things are not so peaceful in the places of manufacture.
The lengthening of labour the closer strain on their nerves and
muscles, as well as the arrangement of the work, cause the workers to
combine and struggle for improved conditions of labour. This struggle,
together with the progress of natural science, of technology, and the
expansion of markets, result in the discovery of machine technology,
of steam and electricity, the foundation of large-scale industry.
The capitalist is impelled, on the one hand, to make himself as
independent as possible of living labour-power; on the other hand, to
increase the volume of his profits. The means thereto are offered him
by the new technical discoveries. Those workers who still possessed
some pride in handicraft, or as expropriated small peasants were not
able to submit to factory discipline, and showed themselves
rebellious, were partly replaced by the labour of women and children,
and partly curbed and made pliable. The labour time is repeatedly
lengthened, and the exploitation of the labour of women and children
assumes terrible proportions. The wage worker, who entered into the
manufacturing premises of the employer full of the pride of his
calling and often with his own tools, became then a small cog in a
gigantic, relentless piece of working machinery.
In this extensive and hitherto unprecedented social transformation the
old forms of handicraft disappear: whole sections of society, which
are the representatives of the disappearing forms of handicraft, sink
into poverty, and augment the class of proletarians. The progress of
the industrial revolution extends also to agriculture: the greed for
surplus value (ground rent) leads to enclosure of common lands by the
great landlords, the independent yeomanry is decimated, the small
proprietor and small tenant are made proletarians. A transmutation of
social classes takes place; the urban population grows rapidly, the
country districts are depopulated: out of the revolutionary process
the outlines of two classes become more and more distinct: Capitalist
and Proletarian.
Both the factory proletariat and the other social sections which adopt
a hostile attitude towards Capitalism react against the
health-destroying exploitation, and struggle for a normal working day.
The working time is curtailed and bounds are set to the efforts of the
capitalist to lengthen the working day and obtain surplus value, but
soon the progress of machine technique compels the worker to labour
more intensely in the shorter working time: the accelerated movement
of the machine determines the pace and necessitates a sharper
straining of the nerves. Henceforth, the worker must compress into a
working hour as much effort as was previously expended in an hour and
a half. The surplus value which is extracted in this way Marx calls
"relative surplus value." The struggle of the workers to secure a
shorter working day is a powerful incentive to the manufacturers to
perfect their machinery, in order to increase the amount of relative
surplus value. The intensification of work or the creation of relative
surplus value is one of the most immediate effects and one of the most
striking features of advanced Capitalism. The understanding of this
new phase is a preliminary condition to the comprehension of the
Marxian system. In this matter, Marx goes considerably beyond the
anti-capitalist theoreticians who followed upon Ricardo.
What happens when the capitalist observes that the extraction of
absolute surplus value comes up against an insurmountable obstacle? He
sets himself to fit up his enterprise with the newest and most costly
machinery, in order to supplant living labour-power and to work more
intensively the living labour-power which he employs.
As, however, less living labour-power brings forth less exchange value
and less surplus value, he is obliged to multiply production, in order
to cover the fall in surplus value by a larger mass of commodities: if
the single commodity brings him less profit, he produces it in such
large quantities that the profit thereon is the same, or even greater,
than formerly. The more complicated machinery, the greater quantities
of raw materials consumed, and the relatively smaller amount of
labour-power signify obviously an alteration in the organic
composition of capital: the constant portion (machinery, raw
materials) preponderates more and more over the variable portion. If,
previously, the composition was 50 per cent. constant and 50 per cent.
variable, it becomes now something like 80 per cent.: 20 per cent. At
the same time, the initial capital is also increased greatly, as
machines and large quantities of raw and auxiliary materials demand
such increase of capital. If, for example, the initial capital
previously amounted to £100,000, divided into £50,000 constant and
£50,000 variable capital, it would now amount to £500,000, comprising
£400,000 constant and £100,000 variable. This organic composition
signifies: that relatively smaller masses of labour set in motion
large masses of technical means of production; labour is more
productive because more intense; the sum total of commodities is
increased; the profit on single articles is smaller, but the total
profit is greater; the reconversion of profits into capital proceeds
rapidly.
The scale of production is more and more extended, and the amount of
initial outlay becomes ever greater, because only large capitals are
capable of creating relative surplus value in sufficient sums to
assure a profit on the enterprise and payment of interest, and thus
assist the accumulation of capital.
The more extended scale of production is not possible to the less
powerful capitalist undertakings. They partly disappear and partly
combine in joint stock companies. The first alternative gives rise to
the concentration of the means of production in fewer hands, and the
second to the centralisation of the means of production. This is the
effect of the new organic composition of capital on the capitalist
class.
The effect on the working class is not less profound. As long as the
hand-worker still played an important part in the works premises, as
long as the variable part was superior or equal to the constant part
in the organic composition of capital, as was the case prior to and at
the beginning of large-scale industry, the accumulation of capital
meant an increased demand for wage-labour. The position was changed as
Capitalism developed, in the manner just described. Although the mass
of capital grows, there is a relative decrease in the demand for
workers. For this growth of capital refers chiefly to the constant
part (machinery and raw materials), while there is a relative
shrinkage in the variable part; that means the worker is obliged to
consume a much greater quantity of raw material than formerly.
And whereas the prices of commodities fall during the phase of the
high organic composition of capital, the period of necessary labour
(the hours needed for the reproduction of wages) becomes shorter,
while the period of surplus labour becomes longer. The great
industrial development therefore signifies for the worker: intensive
exploitation and relative over-population, a reserve army of
labour-power, which is absorbed by industry in times of prosperous
trade, and is speedily demobilised when the slump comes. In times of
good business the reserve army serves to check the wage demands of the
workers regularly employed, and in times of bad trade it serves to
depress wages. The outcome for the workers is as follows:
"Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social
productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the
individual labourer; all means for the development of production
transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation
of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a
man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a machine, destroy
every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into a hated toil;
they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the
labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it
as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he
works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more
hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into
working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the
Juggernaut of Capital. But all methods for the production of surplus
value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every
extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of
those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital
accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must
grow worse. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the
same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,
brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side
of the class that produces its own product in the form of
capital."--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., pp. 660-1.)
The result of the capitalist social order is the unfolding of the
productive forces, the efflorescence of science, the expansion of
material civilisation, the dividing of society into antagonistic
classes, the conferring of economic power on the few, and the
enslavement and degradation of the many.
8. _Economic Contradictions. Decay of Society and its Reconstruction._
As the ripening of the capitalist social order to its highest point
proceeds, its innate contradictions develop, and announce distinctly
the fact that Capitalism has outlived its usefulness, while new life,
a higher form of society, is emerging from its womb. The most
important contradictions are:
The driving force of the capitalist is to obtain the largest measure
of surplus value or profit. The latest stage of Capitalism is,
however, marked by the fact of the high organic composition of
capital, which means that living labour-power, the source of surplus
value, has relatively decreased. The decrease of variable capital
signifies manifestly a lower rate of profit. Capitalism in normal
times exhibits a tendency towards a lowering of the rate of profit.
Therefore it gives rise to a phenomenon which contradicts the aim of
the endeavours of the capitalists. The capitalist strives to
accumulate capital, but as variable capital and the rate of profit
relatively decrease, a tendency towards the depreciation of capital is
revealed. The capitalist endeavours to counteract this tendency, and
to achieve his object by extending the scale of production, so that
the mass of commodities will compensate him for what he loses on them
singly. But while he furthers this object by resorting to a higher
organic composition of capital, he squeezes out the middleman, reduces
the numbers of workers in employment, and creates a relative
over-population, a reserve of those who are only employed
intermittently; there is a substantial shrinkage in the demand for
commodities, as the impoverished masses of the people have obviously
less purchasing power. The capitalist extends production, and at the
same time contracts the market. The upshot is over-production,
under-consumption--crisis: wasting of capital, restriction of
production, paralysis of the productive forces. And if Marx lived
to-day he would add: the developed economy of large-scale capitalism,
that is, the high organic composition of industrial capital, requires
enormous quantities of raw materials, which, in part, are only to be
had from tropical and sub-tropical countries, and also from eastern
Asia; the struggle for these sources of raw materials, and for access
to them, leads to wars in which capital sums of unprecedented amount
are destroyed. Since 1894 these wars over raw materials and trade
routes have broken out every few years. Economic crises and
imperialist wars; immeasurable destruction of capital and productive
forces. This is a consequence which stands in sharp contradiction to
the historical task of the economic order of Capitalism, and to the
immediate aims of the individual capitalists.
Further, the capitalist tries from the beginning to create docile and
unresisting masses of workers, and yet unites and combines them by the
creation of large centres of production; the factories become centres
for the organisation of the workers, and for the welding of the
individual wills of the proletarians into a class will; they abolish
the scattered and antagonistic interests of single sections of the
workers, and consolidate them into a unified class interest. Finally,
the whole economic process, which began by resting on individualist
principles, has assumed a common character; thousands upon thousands
of hand and brain workers engage in production in economic
undertakings upon a single and uniform plan, with the aid of
productive implements which can only be used in common.
The significance and tendency of these contradictions are sketched by
Marx in the great finale, which properly belongs to the concluding
chapter of the third volume:
"As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed
the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are
turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon
as the capitalist means of production stands on its own feet, then the
further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land
and other means of production into socially exploited, and therefore
common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of
private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be
expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the
capitalist employing many labourers. This expropriation is
accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist
production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist
always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this
expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop on an
ever-extending scale the co-operative form of the labour process, the
conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation
of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into
instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all
means of production by their use as the means of production of
combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the
net of the world market, and with this, the international character of
the capitalist regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number
of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of
this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the
revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of
capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
on the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along
with it, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and
socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become
incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is
burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The
expropriators are expropriated."--("Capital," Vol. I. English edition,
chap. 84.)
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Compare M. Beer, "History of British Socialism," Vol, I., pp.
245-270.
CONCLUSION.
An appreciation of Marx can only be arrived at by adopting the Marxian
method. We must judge him in the same way as any other towering figure
in the realm of thought or of action. Marx was a child of his time,
and his system is a logical conception of certain economic and social
phenomena of his age, owing something to the pioneer work and thinking
of some of his predecessors.
Two important events dominated his thinking: the French Revolution and
the English Industrial Revolution. Even apart from the statement of
Arnold Ruge that in 1843-44 Marx had collected a vast amount of
material for a history of the French National Convention, we know from
the work he did between 1844 and 1852 how profound was the influence
of the French Revolution on his intellectual life. Still deeper,
however, were the traces left upon his mind by the studies he made on
the economic transformation of England during the period 1700-1825.
Both events are obvious, catastrophic expressions of class movements
and class conflicts, in which the middle class, as the representative
of a higher economic order, gains the victory over autocratic forms of
feudal authority and oligarchic systems of organisation through State
regulation, in which, however, at the same time, a new class--the
working class--raises its head and begins to make a stand against the
victor.
Marx was led to interpret these events in this way and to make them
the basis of his conception of history chiefly through the influence
of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist school following
upon Ricardo. To the end of his life he clung to the opinion that
dialectic, as Hegel had formulated it, was indeed mystical but, when
materialistically conceived, contains the laws of the movement of
society. "The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands
in no wise hinders him from presenting in a comprehensive and
intelligible manner its general processes."--(Preface to second German
edition of "Capital," 1873.)
The splitting up of the concept into contradictories, and the
attainment of a higher positive through the negation of these
contradictories, that was what, to Marx's mind, constituted the
essence and the deepest meaning of the French Revolution and of the
English Industrial Revolution. Society, the positive, split up into
feudal and bourgeois, into two sharply divided contradictories, the
bourgeoisie appearing as the negation, to be supplanted by the
proletariat and so to make room for a Communist society, the higher
synthesis.
What he got from Hegel in a mystical form found an economic expression
in Ricardo and the anti-capitalist school. Ricardo's writings, which
belong to the second decade of the nineteenth century and which
formulate, in the guise of a system of economics, the antagonisms and
the conflicts between industry and landed nobility, presented
themselves as a practical demonstration of the validity of dialectic.
The fundamental idea of Ricardo's system may be expressed as follows:
Capital is the motive force of society and the creator of
civilisation, but the fruits of its activity are enjoyed not by
capital but by the landed nobility. That is the thesis; now for the
proof. The value of all commodities which can be made in any quantity
desired consists in the quantity of labour which is expended for the
purpose of producing them. The value is expressed in the costs of
production, the most important components of which are wages and
profit. Wages and profit stand in opposition to one another: if wages
rise, profit falls, and conversely. Wages consist in a definite
quantity of the necessaries of life, sufficient to keep the worker
effective. Wages must obviously rise whenever the cost of living
rises. The facts show that this is actually the case. The following
reasons make this clear. In consequence of the civilising effects of
capital, there is an increase in the opportunities for work and in
population, resulting in an increased demand for the necessaries of
life. Agriculture must be extended, but agricultural land is limited
and of varying quality. The extension of agriculture brings into use
the inferior kinds of land, which demand a greater amount of labour
for their cultivation. And as the amount of labour determines the
value of the commodity, the cost of living increases, and there is a
rapid rise in ground rents. The workers demand higher wages, whereby
the profits of the employers are diminished. But there is still
another circumstance to be taken into consideration. Whereas the
prices of agricultural products rise, those of industrial products
fall, since, in consequence of the invention of machinery and of the
superior division of labour, smaller quantities of labour are required
to produce manufactured goods. The result of the entire working of
capital for the civilised community is accordingly the reduction of
profits, the depreciation of capital, and the increase of wages. This
latter, however, is of no advantage to the workers, for food prices
rise higher and higher; on the contrary, the whole advantage falls to
the landed nobility, who do nothing for the furtherance of
civilisation, but who, through ground rents and protective tariffs,
receive everything.
We have, then, in Ricardo a system of economic contradictions between
profit, wages, and rent, or between bourgeoisie, proletariat, and
nobility, in which the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat
is still undeveloped.
The year of the publication of Ricardo's "Principles" (1817) is the
year which witnessed the rise of English Socialism. In that year,
Robert Owen, in a public meeting in the City of London, declared
himself a Socialist. Three years later appeared the first criticisms
of Ricardo's political economy. In these it was argued that, according
to Ricardo, labour is the source of value, yet he considers capital as
the creative factor of society and the working class as a mere
appendage of capital. It must be the reverse; for the workers create
values together with the surplus products which are appropriated by
capital. In 1817, Robert Owen openly declares himself a Socialist;
four years later appears the anonymous letter to Lord John Russell;
Percy Ravenstone publishes his "Criticism of Capitalism," John Gray
his Lecture, and Hodgskin his pamphlet on the unproductive nature of
capital, in which he establishes the existence of a raging class
struggle.
The deep impression which these writings made on Marx is clearly seen
in the second and third volumes of his "Theories on Surplus Value."
And he links on to them. He completed what Ricardo hinted at and what
the anti-capitalist school deduced from Ricardo. How Marx continued
and elaborated these deductions we haw already seen in Chapter 3,
"Outlines of Marx's Economics," and Chapter 7, "Surplus Value as the
Motive Force of Society," where capital is shown to be the mass of
surplus value of which the workers have been deprived.
The deductions made by the English anti-capitalist school from Ricardo
signified, politically, the first awakenings of the English workers to
class-consciousness, to the struggle against capital. Just as
Ricardo's theory of value and rent was the battle-cry of capital
against the aristocracy--a battle-cry which created the free trade
movement and shattered the economic power of the landed nobility, so
the theory of value and surplus value was to become the battle-cry of
the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the declaration of
independence, so to speak, of the working class. The English
proletariat lacked a philosopher who could work out the idea to its
logical conclusion, until Marx applied himself to the problem and
solved it, so far indeed as philosophical problems can be solved, by a
science which places itself at the disposal of a class movement.
For it is impossible to set aside the view that Marx's theory of value
and surplus value has rather the significance of a political and
social slogan than of an economic truth. It is for Marx the basis of
the class struggle of the workers against the middle class, just as
Ricardo's theory of rent was the basis of the class struggle of the
bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, or as the doctrines of the social
contract and of the natural rights of man formed the basis of the
struggle of the middle classes against autocracy and divine right.
Such militant philosophies need not in themselves be true, only they
must accord with the sentiments of the struggling mass. It is with
such philosophical fictions that human history works. Marx's theory of
value explains neither the vast and unparalleled accumulation of
wealth nor the movement of prices during the last sixty years. Wealth,
measured in values, has, in the last few decades, increased by many
times the increase in living labour-power. In this connection the old
formula can be reversed: wealth increases in geometrical, living
labour-power in arithmetical progression. The greatest difficulty in
Marx is that the inventors and discoverers, the chemists and
physicists, the pioneers and organisers of industry and agriculture,
are not regarded by him as creators of surplus values. Thinkers, who
by chemical researches and discoveries double the productive capacity
of the soil and conjure forth values in millions from the waste
products of industry: physicists who place new sources of power and
new means of production at the disposal of mankind and multiply the
productivity of labour; organisers who co-ordinate the forces of
production and introduce new methods of working--all this creative and
directive work, demanding, as it often does, an infinite amount of
intensive intellectual effort, is not considered to increase the total
sum of exchange values of the nation.
However, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, Marx's
theory is, generally speaking, correct; distribution is carried out
under the capitalist economic system not according to the amount of
productive work done, but in proportion to the outlay of capital and
the skill in commercial manoeuvring which obtains in the sphere of
circulation.
Unique as an investigator of the laws of the proletarian movement,
eminent and even a great pioneer as a sociologist, Marx is, in respect
of economic theory, predominantly an agitator. His system, more than
any other system of Socialism or of political economy, is the
revolutionary expression of proletarian thought and feeling. His
doctrines of value, surplus value, the economic determination of
history, the evolution from Capitalism to Socialism, the political and
economic class struggle, will for long have the force of truth for the
masses and will continue to move them.
Marx's heart must have been filled with joy and gladness when, out of
the elements of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist
school, out of his studies of the French Revolution, of the English
Industrial Revolution, and of French and English Socialism there arose
a unified system whose destiny it was to lead mankind out of the
earth-bound history of the past into the new world wherein a spiritual
civilisation should fully blossom forth. Man is to quit the realm of
necessity and to enter into that of freedom, where he shall cease to
be a tool for the profit of others and shall rise to have a purpose of
his own, freely associating himself with his fellow men to work in the
service of all.
"The realm of freedom, indeed, only begins there where work
conditioned by necessity and external utility ceases. According to the
nature of the thing, therefore, it lies beyond the sphere of actual
material production. Just as the savage must struggle with nature for
the satisfaction of his needs, for self-preservation and
self-reproduction, so too must the civilised man, whatever be the form
of society or the methods of production obtaining. Side by side with
his own evolution develops this constitutional necessity, because his
needs increase; but, at the same time, the forces of production which
satisfy these needs likewise increase. Freedom in this sphere can only
consist in this--that men in their social relationship, the associated
producers, should regulate this material exchange with Nature in a
rational manner and bring it under their united control, instead of
being governed by it as by some blind power; it should be carried on
with the minimum expenditure of energy and under conditions most
adapted to and most worthy of human nature. Yet it remains all the
same a realm of necessity. It is beyond this where that development of
human power, which may be called independent purpose, begins, the true
realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon the basis of
that realm of necessity."--("Capital," Vol. III., 2, p. 355.)
The National Labour Press, Ltd., Manchester and London. 31258
* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Typographical errors corrected in text: |
| |
| Page 37: FN4: Fouvierists replaced with Fourierists |
| Page 42: Wilhelm Wolf replaced with Wilhelm Wolff |
| Page 60: "That will give give them new" replaced with |
| "That will give them new" |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX ***
***** This file should be named 37290-8.txt or 37290-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/9/37290/
Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
